Majete — Landseed

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Map key

Majete Wildlife Reserve

Iconic wildlifetap a species ↗

Black rhinoceros

Savanna elephant

Lion

Leopard

Spotted hyaena

African buffalo

Sable antelope

Nyala

Waterbuck

Hippopotamus

M1 & main roads

Kapichira Falls

Altitude bands · 97–826 m in the reserve

Escarpment, beyond1,000 m +

Beyond the reserve830–1,000

Majete Hills crest650–830

Western hills, miombo450–650

Mid slopes300–450

Eastern lowland, savanna180–300

Shire terraces & riverbed97–180

Bands are altitude, not a vegetation survey. Majete is an unusually close case — miombo really does hold the higher west and savanna woodland the lower east (Sherry 1989, via Nieman et al. 2021) — but the colour is still elevation, and both woodlands cross band lines.

Live · forest condition

Active fire—24h

Deforestation—30d

In Malawi fire mostly happens inside protected areas: less than 5% of the landscape outside them burns in a year, because it has been cropped or grazed bare. Miombo and savanna are fire-maintained, and Majete burns deliberately — a detection here is more often management than damage. Nieman, van Wilgen & Leslie 2021.

NASA FIRMS · Global Forest Watch

Wildlife · population

Majete Wildlife Reserve

A compact block of 691 km² in the Lower Shire Valley, bounded on the east by the Shire itself and on the north-east by the Mkulumadzi. Its edge runs about 126 km as digitised — only 1.3 times the 95 km a circle of equal area would need, which makes it one of the more compact protected shapes anywhere. That matters here: a short edge for the area enclosed is a short edge to patrol, and Majete is fenced.

Area

691 km² published

Boundary

~126 km as digitised

Compactness

0.56 Polsby–Popper

Gazetted

1955

Restoration

from 2003

Elevation

97 – 826 m

IUCN category IV — a Wildlife Reserve, not a national park; gazetted 1955

African Parks' first mandate — agreed with Malawi's Department of National Parks and Wildlife in 2003

2,500+ animals of 16 large-mammal species reintroduced from Malawi, Zambia and South Africa

A 2018 camera-trap survey of 140 locations detected 35 mammal species, with estimators putting 36–41 present.

Area, gazetting date and reintroduction totals: Nieman, van Wilgen & Leslie 2021 (Fire Ecology 17:4) and Reece et al. 2021/2023, which both state 691 km². Boundary drawn from OpenStreetMap way 25573053 — Majete has no OSM relation, unlike most gazetted parks. Note — three areas disagree, and the site shows the most traceable one. 691 km² is stated by Reece et al. in both 2021 and 2023 and is what appears above. Nieman et al. give “circa 70 000 ha”. The WDPA record for this reserve is reported as 708.77 km², and the OSM ring drawn here measures 707 km² — which agree to 0.2%, suggesting both derive from the same official boundary and that 691 km² may be the outlier. The WDPA figure could not be verified directly for this build (the Protected Planet API needs a key), so it is disclosed rather than displayed. The outline is indicative, not cadastral. Perimeter and compactness are computed from the OSM ring and are scale-dependent — the true boundary is longer.