Shrugging off a turbulent past, could this park be Malawi’s next Big Five destination?

As we navigate the wide, lazy waterway, a hippo and her calf peer at us, eyes and nostrils barely breaking the water’s surface. She barks a warning and we steer right to give them space. My eyes scan the landscape, from river to plains to the Chiunguni Hills. Elephants graze among the reeds, bathing themselves in water and dust. A black stork snatches snails from the marsh with its pointed beak. Suddenly, two wide-eyed young fishermen hurry towards us, each standing in his canoe and paddling with all of his might.

“Wildlife was seen as a free resource to be exploited for commercial gain, and also for survival.”

- Fran Read, African Parks

For decades, Malawi has grappled with human-wildlife conflict. Many villagers hunted illegally for meat to sell or supplement otherwise protein-poor diets. Some poached elephants and rhinos, selling tusks and horns on the black market. According to Paul Taylor, chairman of the Wildlife and Environmental Society’s Blantyre branch, villagers even tore down elephant-proof fencing that had been installed to protect their crops, in order to get at the animals. The situation was, to say the least, complicated.

But the consequences to the wildlife were not. Snare traps and fishing nets, common poaching tools, killed and maimed indiscriminately. “They are placed on the game paths that many species use, as it is a simple highway through the bush to and from waterholes and feeding areas. So all manner of species were affected,” said Chris Badger of Central African Wilderness Safaris. “Cats and padded animals who tend to use the paths to avoid thorns were hammered. Sable antelope were particularly affected.”

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By 2015, wildlife throughout the country had gone into what African Parks’ Fran Read called a “terminal decline.” While Liwonde once had eight lion prides, all but one cat had since died or fled. “Wildlife was seen as a free resource to be exploited for commercial gain, and also for survival,” Read told me.

By August 2017, when I found myself wondering what had Liwonde’s ducks so riled up, the situation was turning around. Two years earlier, African Parks took over management of the park, launching a slew of anti-poaching, community development, and wildlife reintroduction programs. They removed more than 31,000 snares, developed rigorous training and selection criteria for law enforcement, and added drones, helicopters and an informant network. And only last year, they reintroduced cheetahs to Liwonde and completed the historic translocation of 500 elephants to balance populations between parks. Earlier this year, lions returned too.

As the Malawian fishermen neared, I realized they were frightened. Gabriel hollers questions in the Bantu language, Chichewa, and they respond, pointing toward the shoreline over their shoulders, the one we were slowly angling toward. But their paddling never slows, and soon the space for our encounter dissolved. We take a hard right and belly the canoe up on a sandbar.

“Stand up carefully and take these,” Gabriel tells me, passing his binoculars forward. I rise awkwardly, feet touching either side of the canoe, thankful our perch seems stable, and lift the binoculars to my eyes. One-hundred feet ahead of us, basking in the muck and the sunshine, is a 500-pound Nile crocodile. I settle back on the bench, pulling my arms and legs tightly toward the center of the canoe.

Guides are advocates for the wildlife, but they also understand the villagers’ dilemma. They see women sleep beside their crops at night to fend off roving hippos, and they know men who return to fishing just days after a crocodile killed their friend.

As we push off the shore and turn around to trace a side canal, I twist to face Gabriel. “Is that why those guys were paddling so fast away from here? Were they scared?” I ask.

He gave a clipped nod of his chin. “Yes. Yes,” he replies. “The thing is, we have had crocodiles kill a lot of people here. So they were scared. Because it was on land, it could get into their boats very easily. That is why we turned around.”

As we paddle and push through the shallow channel, Gabriel points out camouflaged waterbuck, leggy egrets, water-walking jacana—commonly referred to as a Jesus bird—and a white-headed fish eagle, Malawi’s national bird. “It looks a lot like the bald eagle, the national bird in the United States!” I tell him. He smiles politely. It’s clearly not the first time an eager visitor has made the comparison.

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Gabriel’s expert eye also spies illegal nets strung across the canal. He tsk’s and shakes his head, pulling one up to show me the fish tangled in its webbing. “People are not supposed to do this anymore, but they still do,” he says, a hint of resignation in his voice.

Guides are advocates for the wildlife, but they also understand the villagers’ dilemma. They see women sleep beside their crops at night to fend off roving hippos, and they know men who return to fishing just days after a crocodile killed their friend.

That evening, back at Bushman’s Baobabs, as I type up my notes from the day, I hear a violent rustling. In the inky, pre-star night, I catch the silhouette of an elephant family grazing through the camp, not 10 feet from the porch of my chalet. I listen as the gentle giants tear at the baobabs and scratch against the thatch roofs of the huts, and I wonder: If this were my garden being eaten, my home threatened, mightn’t I rightfully fear, even despise, the wildlife that so many rightfully revere?

Fortunately, African Parks’ mission includes supporting the people who live near their parks, providing education, water provision, micro-irrigation, and jobs. “There has been a dramatic drop in illegal activities now that communities can benefit from the legal opportunities that come from a well-managed park,” Read says.

African Parks’ management strategies are also setting Malawi up as a safari hotspot. Going into 2018, Liwonde is the country’s second Big Five destination. And between the ease of independent travel, the knowledgeable guides, and the ample opportunities for close encounters with wildlife, it just might be the perfect place for an adventure with perspective.