Many countries have now set aside large tracts as national parks, game reserves, or forest reserves. Of these parks, only some are large enough to be self-contained ecosystems, and most have been set aside to accommodate large mammals. In East Africa there are also sanctuaries for birds and marine organisms. The conservation of vegetation is undertaken mainly in forest reserves but also in national parks. In addition, a number of countries are attempting to conserve wildlife by refusing export licenses for certain kinds of skins, especially those of the leopard, cheetah, and zebra.

Conservation efforts in Southern Africa have been aided by the creation of transfrontier parks and conservation areas, which link nature reserves and parks in neighbouring countries to create large international conservation areas that protect biodiversity and allow a wider range of movement for migratory animal populations. One such park is the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP), where representative populations of most savanna species are maintained. The GLTP links one of Africa’s oldest and best-known national parks, Kruger National Park, with Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park and Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park. Another is Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, which links South Africa’s Kalahari Gemsbok National Park with Botswana’s Gemsbok National Park; it conserves a tract of arid country with such associated types of antelope as springbok and gemsbok; smaller reserves and parks conserve particular species. Only one large mammal species, the blaubok (or blaauwbok), has become extinct, though several subspecies have nearly disappeared; one such subspecies—the quagga, a race of zebra—has vanished.

East and central African countries have large national parks, which have been expanded in size or have increased in number as a result of the economic benefits of tourism. Kenya’s parks include Tsavo, one of the largest, with an area of more than 8,000 square miles, Lake Nakuru National Park for flamingos, several montane parks, and a marine park. Uganda has several national parks. Tanzania has the famous Serengeti National Park, with its unrivaled populations of plains ungulates, and the parks of Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara, Arusha, and others. Other countries with notable national parks and game reserves are Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. All parks in these countries preserve representative woodland, thornbush, grassland, and succulent-desert habitats and species.

Elsewhere the situation is less satisfactory. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, national parks were all seriously depleted after independence. Congo now has several major national parks, including the Virunga National Park (3,100 square miles), but in the late 20th century many suffered from deforestation and poaching, as well as general human encroachment, due to conflicts and warfare in the region. Ethiopia has several parks developed largely during the 1970s, while Somalia has only a rudimentary system consisting mostly of game reserves and one area (Luc Badana) nominally a national park but failing to meet UN criteria for such parks. The “W” park is shared between Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin, but most western African countries have only small national parks if any at all.

Animals not protected in parks are not necessarily threatened. Many large species are still plentiful in forest or game reserves or in controlled-hunting areas. Well-managed forest reserves in particular provide secure habitats for many smaller unprotected forms.

Animals affecting land usage

Historically, the abundance of elephants and other large ungulates may have stimulated some individuals—notably western African hunters in the forests and Europeans in Southern Africa—to occupy certain areas. Trade routes were established and early hunter-explorers were influenced by the availability of elephants, whose ivory tusks slaves could carry.

Large and small animals now affect humans by competing with them or with their livestock. They may prey on people or on livestock or carry diseases affecting either. The bilharzia snail and the Simulium fly (host to an organism causing blindness), the tsetse fly, and the mosquito collectively affect human beings and their livestock far more than do such individually large or formidable species as lions or elephants.

The larger ungulates may compete with domestic livestock for forage, but they are more keenly resented and hunted by those agriculturists whose crops they eat. Pastoralists are much more concerned about lions that occasionally kill cattle than they are about locusts or rats, which, by depleting forage, indirectly cause the death of much livestock; such perceptions may hinder eradication or better control of these pests.

Danger to humans from large animals—carnivorous or otherwise—has been greatly exaggerated, but disease carried by living organisms has remained a serious problem. Diseases have reduced crop productivity, spoiled harvests, and acted as a curb on the better integration of land use and on the extension of pastoralism and mixed farming into underused areas.