About the park
Liwonde National Park: Malawi's comeback story
A compact park on the Shire River that was nearly poached empty a decade ago, and is now the source population that restocks protected areas across Malawi. The turnaround since 2015 is one of the best conservation stories in Africa, and you can watch it from a boat.
A river park in southern Malawi
Liwonde covers about 548 square kilometres in Malawi's Machinga and Mangochi districts, near the town of Liwonde, and was proclaimed a national park in 1973. You may see 580 square kilometres quoted; the consensus figure is 545 to 548. A 30-kilometre stretch of the Shire River, the outflow of Lake Malawi, runs through and along the park, and everything about Liwonde organises itself around that water: the floodplain, the fever trees, the mopane woodland behind, and the wildlife that concentrates on the river every dry season.
Since 2018 the adjacent Mangochi Forest Reserve has been managed under the same mandate, increasing the conservation footprint by 60 percent to roughly 903 square kilometres and effectively extending the Liwonde landscape.
From poached-out to restored
Before 2015, Liwonde was in serious decline: heavy commercial poaching and illegal fishing, with 50 elephants killed between 2014 and 2017. In August 2015 African Parks assumed management in partnership with Malawi's Department of National Parks and Wildlife, and the first job was removing snares. The counts vary by period, from 18,000 to 23,000 snares recovered in the first two years to over 40,000 removed since 2015 on the park's own figures, but the outcome is not in dispute: the park was effectively de-snared.
Then came the reintroductions. Seven cheetahs in May 2017 returned the species to Malawi after about two decades. Nine to ten lions followed in early 2018, the first here in roughly 20 years. In 2021, wild dogs were translocated into Liwonde and Majete. A park that had lost its predators got them all back within four years.
The translocation timeline
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2015 | African Parks assumes management with DNPW; large-scale snare removal begins |
| 2016–2017 | The 500 Elephants project moves roughly 500 elephants from Liwonde and Majete to Nkhotakota, one of the largest elephant translocations ever attempted |
| 2017 | 7 cheetahs reintroduced from South Africa; 34 elephants moved to Nyika |
| 2018 | 9–10 lions reintroduced; Mangochi Forest Reserve added to the mandate |
| 2021 | 14 wild dogs translocated into Liwonde and Majete combined |
| 2022 | 263 elephants relocated to Kasungu National Park |
| 2024 | Aerial census records over 12,000 animals; tourism generates over US$600,000 |
A dating note: African Parks' own site places the 500 Elephants project in 2015, but the translocation ran in 2016 and 2017. And the 2022 Kasungu move is often quoted as 250 elephants; African Parks' own figure is 263.
Why 600 elephants is the headline
Liwonde holds around 600 elephants today, roughly the same as at the 2020 aerial survey. That stability is the point: the park has supplied more than 600 elephants to other protected areas since 2015, exporting its surplus rather than growing past its carrying capacity. Nkhotakota, Nyika and Kasungu have all been restocked from this one small park on the Shire.
It also means the park pays its own way as a wildlife source and a local economy. In 2024, tourism generated over US$600,000 and the park's Environmental Education Centre hosted more than 5,000 visitors.
Liwonde and the other Malawi parks
| Park or reserve | Relationship |
|---|---|
| Majete Wildlife Reserve | African Parks' first-ever project and the model Liwonde followed; the two have exchanged elephants and lions |
| Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve | African Parks-managed; received the 500 Elephants translocation from Liwonde and Majete |
| Mangochi Forest Reserve | Adjacent, under the same African Parks mandate since 2018; effectively an extension of Liwonde |
| Kasungu National Park | DNPW-managed; received 263 of Liwonde's elephants in 2022 |
Liwonde, Majete and Nkhotakota together form the African Parks cluster in Malawi, and a multi-park itinerary through them is the natural way to see the country's restoration story.