Qualla: Liuwa Plain National Park

Liuwa Plain National Park: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonchwalker, CC BY-SA 3.0. For years, she was the only one. Lady Liuwa -- a lone lioness on 3,369 square kilometres of open grassland in western Zambia -- patrolled a kingdom without a pride. Poaching and excess hunting had eliminated every other lion from Liuwa Plain by the time the conservation group African Parks took over management in 2003. National Geographic filmed her story for a 2010 documentary called The Last Lioness, and the footage is haunting: a single predator moving through plains that once supported a full complement of large carnivores. Lady Liuwa died of natural causes in 2017. But by then, she was no longer alone.

Image: Jonchwalker | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liuwa Plain National Park: A King's Hunting Ground

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MA Heyns, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name tells you what this place is. "Liuwa" means "plain" in the local Liuwa dialect of the Lozi language, and the landscape delivers on the label: a grassland roughly 45 kilometres across, scattered with raffia palms and patches of woodland, stretching flat and open under eno...

Image: MA Heyns | CC BY-SA 4.0

Liuwa Plain National Park: Collapse and Recovery

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MA Heyns, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the late 1990s, Liuwa was in crisis. Surveys suggested that buffalo, eland, Lichtenstein's hartebeest, and roan antelope had been locally eradicated. When African Parks entered a management partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife and the Barotse Royal Es...

Image: MA Heyns | CC BY-SA 4.0

Liuwa Plain National Park: The Second-Largest Migration

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonchwalker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tens of thousands of blue wildebeest still gather on Liuwa Plain for their annual migration -- the second-largest in Africa, after the Serengeti-Mara crossing. It is a spectacle that few outsiders have witnessed, because Liuwa has experienced limited tourism for most of its exist...

Image: Jonchwalker | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liuwa Plain National Park: What a Lioness Left Behind

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MA Heyns, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lady Liuwa's story became a conservation parable -- the lone survivor whose endurance symbolized both the depths of a crisis and the possibility of recovery. She was the last of her kind in the park, a solitary figure on a plain that should have been shared with a pride. African ...

Image: MA Heyns | CC BY-SA 4.0