What is a National Park Conservancy? | The National Parks Campaign
The National Parks Campaign

What is a National Park Conservancy?

A new generation of landscape-scale conservation — moving beyond isolated protected areas toward integrated, community-driven conservation economies.

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A Definition

A National Park Conservancy is a large-scale, community-owned and multi-land-use conservation and development landscape established around an existing national park to protect ecological integrity, strengthen local economies, and create long-term shared prosperity between people, wildlife, and nature-based enterprise.

Unlike traditional "micro-conservancies" commonly developed in countries such as Kenya and Namibia — which are often smaller, single-purpose conservation areas focused primarily on wildlife tourism or habitat protection — a National Park Conservancy is designed as a vast, integrated territorial framework that encompasses multiple landowners, multiple land uses, multiple governance stakeholders, and multiple revenue streams across existing highly fragmented and community-occupied landscapes.

A National Park Conservancy recognises that the long-term survival of national parks cannot depend solely on the protection of the park boundary itself. Instead, it acknowledges that the surrounding landscapes — including wildlife corridors, communal lands, agricultural zones, villages, watersheds, and natural ecosystems — are ecologically, economically, and socially interconnected with the national park and must therefore be planned and managed as part of one broader living landscape.

Within a National Park Conservancy

Diverse land uses coexist within a unified conservation and development framework

These commonly include a range of activities that together create an integrated, resilient landscape economy.

🏘️Rural and traditional community settlements
🦒Wildlife dispersal and migration corridors
🌿High-value, low-impact agriculture
🌿Regenerative agriculture and landscape restoration
☀️Renewable energy infrastructure
🏕️Eco-tourism and hospitality developments
🎯Hunting concessions and sustainable wildlife utilisation areas
🦌Game farming and biodiversity enterprises
🌎Carbon, biodiversity, and ecosystem service projects
💧Water catchment and watershed protection zones
🤝Community enterprise and livelihood development areas
Cultural Lodge
Conservation is not treated as a standalone activity, but rather as the organising foundation for integrated rural economic development, landscape resilience, and long-term natural capital management.
Boundaries & Scale

The ultimate size and boundaries of a National Park Conservancy are not predetermined. Instead, they are established only after the completion of three foundational phases of conservancy planning, development, and management.

A further defining feature is the creation of a new, scalable destination identity and economic brand that is owned, governed, and managed by the surrounding communities as an extension of the existing government-managed national park brand.

The Kafue Example

The proposed Kafue Conservancy would surround and integrate with Kafue National Park, creating a unified landscape destination that expands the conservation, tourism, investment, and community development value of the national park far beyond its formal boundaries.

In this model, the national park remains the protected ecological core under government management, while the conservancy functions as the surrounding socio-economic and ecological buffer landscape that supports wildlife connectivity, community livelihoods, climate resilience, and regional economic transformation.

How boundaries are defined

Three Foundational Phases

The boundaries and ultimate scale of a National Park Conservancy are only established after the successful completion of these three foundational phases of the conservancy planning, development, and management program.

Phase One

Extensive Natural Resource Audits

Comprehensive assessments of biodiversity, wildlife movements, ecosystem health, water systems, soils, vegetation, carbon assets, tourism potential, agricultural suitability, and cultural heritage resources across the proposed landscape.

Phase Two

Comprehensive Community & Stakeholder Planning

Inclusive engagement processes involving local communities, traditional authorities, government agencies, private landholders, conservation organisations, and investors to define shared objectives, governance systems, benefit-sharing mechanisms, and development priorities.

Phase Three

Formal Integrated Master Land Use Planning

The creation of a legally and spatially defined land use framework that identifies conservation zones, agricultural zones, settlement expansion areas, tourism nodes, infrastructure corridors, renewable energy sites, wildlife corridors, and long-term development priorities across the landscape.

Explore further

Go deeper into the model

📋 Our Methodology

The 10-Year, 8-Step Planning & Management Program

The detailed, decade-long framework that guides the planning, development, and management of every National Park Conservancy — from natural resource audit through to full community governance.

Explore the program → 🧰 Resources

The Campaign Support Toolbox

Operational toolkits, resources, frameworks, and partner guides for Corporate, NGO, Creator, and Community partners who are supporting the National Parks Campaign.

Open the toolbox → 🗺️ Live Projects

National Park Conservancies in Development

Explore the national parks and surrounding landscapes where the Conservancy model is actively being planned, developed, and implemented across Africa.

View conservancies →
Get in Touch

Interested in the Conservancy Model?

Whether you are a government agency, a community organisation, a conservation body, or an investor, we welcome conversations about how the National Park Conservancy model could be applied in your landscape.

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