Buffalo from 1,100 to 35,000: the Zambezi Delta's great wildlife return wins a global conservation prize

When Mark Haldane began working in Coutada 11, a vast hunting concession in Mozambique's Zambezi Delta, in 1994, years of civil war had left its wildlife shattered. Three decades on, the recovery his company, Zambeze Delta Safaris, has helped drive — anti-poaching patrols, habitat work and community development funded by carefully regulated hunting — has won the 2026 Markhor Award, presented on October 22 during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia, for conservation through sustainable wildlife use. The figures the company submitted tell the scale: African buffalo up from about 1,100 to some 35,000, sable antelope from roughly 40 to 4,000, and a lion population reintroduced with 24 animals in 2018 now estimated at around 120. Mongabay noted not every figure has been independently verified, though Mozambique's Foundation for the Conservation of Biodiversity has documented substantial recovery in the region. The award's logic is the delta's logic: when wildlife brings lasting value to the people who live alongside it, the people protect it — and the herds come back.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: market force