Country – Zambia 
Working with partners Panthera, Peace Parks Foundation and The Sustainable Wildlife Management Program (FAO/CIFOR), CCI is working to support four chiefdoms in southern Zambia to develop a community conservancy. The aim is to develop a wildlife-based economy for the people in these chiefdoms that lie in the very heart of the KAZA TFCA and land use plans that retains the wildlife connectivity between the Greater Kafue Ecosystem and the heart of KAZA.
The proposed conservancy has been named Inyasemu Community Conservancy by the chiefs: a combination of their four names. Activities in the area include supporting chiefs through the decision making process; capacitating village action groups for improved governance and resource protection, working with the communities to help their ideas come to fruition, food security and livelihood support programs, employment of community game guards and primary school education investment.
This is a key landscape for cheetah as well as other wide ranging species like African wild dogs and elephants. Already there is anecdotal evidence of an increase in wildlife numbers, and we are recording less poaching and greater tolerance as well. Securing connectivity across this critical unprotected gap within KAZA will be a significant contribution to cheetah – and other wildlife conservation.
