Game Management Areas Explained

THE SYSTEM THAT CONNECTS COMMUNITIES TO WILDLIFE

Zambia’s national parks protect some of the most significant wildlife landscapes on the continent. But parks alone are not enough. A national park without a functioning buffer zone is an ecological island — isolated from the broader landscape, cut off from migration corridors, and over time, vulnerable.

Game Management Areas are the buffer zones that give Zambia’s parks their depth. They are large, mixed-use landscapes surrounding the parks where wildlife moves freely, communities live and farm, and land use is governed under a framework designed to keep both people and wildlife viable over the long term.

Zambia has set aside 38 percent of its total land mass as protected area — national parks and the GMAs that surround them. That commitment is one of the highest of any country in Africa. ZWCF operates entirely within Game Management Areas. Working in a GMA is not a unilateral decision. You have to be invited. Communities own this land and they determine who works within it. A foundation or organization can only operate in a GMA if it has a genuine reason to be there — a purpose that the community recognizes, relationships that have been built over time, and trust that has been earned rather than assumed.

Who Owns a GMA

Unlike a national park, a Game Management Area is not state land. It is communally owned — the land belongs to the communities who live there. Chiefs and their chiefdoms hold customary authority over the land. Elected Community Resource Boards represent community interests in how natural resources are managed and how revenues are distributed.

This ownership structure is intentional. The GMA system was designed around a straightforward principle: that the communities living alongside wildlife must have a genuine stake in its survival. Where wildlife generates real, consistent value for those communities — through employment, revenue, infrastructure, and food — those communities protect it. Where it does not, alternative land uses take over.

How a GMA Is Governed

The Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) provides regulatory oversight across all GMAs — setting wildlife quotas, issuing permits, and enforcing wildlife law. But governance at the local level sits with the communities themselves, through their CRBs and traditional leadership structures.

Licensed operators who work within a GMA negotiate their terms directly with DNPW, the relevant CRB, and the traditional Chief before a concession is granted. Community obligations — employment, revenue sharing, infrastructure, meat distribution — are written into the concession agreement and legally binding. This is not charity. It is the architecture of the system.

Why Wildlife Moves Freely

There are no fences between Zambia’s national parks and their surrounding GMAs. Wildlife moves through both without restriction — following seasonal grazing, water, and migratory patterns that have existed for centuries. The health of the GMA directly determines the health of the park.

When a GMA functions well — when communities are economically invested in wildlife, when anti-poaching presence is sustained, when habitat is protected — animals range freely across a vast, connected system. When it does not function, pressure builds at the boundary, movement narrows, and populations begin to fragment.

This is why ZWCF works in GMAs and not inside the parks themselves. The parks are already protected. The GMAs are where the outcome is decided.

Where ZWCF Works

ZWCF operates in three regions, each centered on a major national park system: the South Luangwa Valley, the Greater Kafue ecosystem, and the North Luangwa Valley. In each region, our programs are designed to strengthen the communities whose land forms the buffer — because stronger communities mean more wildlife, and the two are inseparable.

Conservation that begins with community is not a slogan. It is a description of how the system actually works — and why every investment ZWCF makes in a village, a school, a borehole, or a scout is ultimately an investment in the wildlife that surrounds it