As the pilot tilted the nose downward to descend, the rough smears of greens, browns, and blues became a metropolis of life. What looked like rocks became hippos heaving or a trail of migrating elephants, infants in tow. Hundreds of specks blown across the landscape became herds of darting impala. Finally the ground rushed to greet us. We bounced like a marble on the rock-and-dirt airstrip and rattled along in a clamor until, just when it seemed like the plane would burst into a heap of scraps and bolts, we came to a halt in a puffing cloud of dust.

Northern Botswana is one of the few landscapes in the world that retains its magnificent megafauna. To get there, I flew over the sprawling tract of land at the convergence of Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe that will, in three years, be designated a transfrontier park under an agreement the five countries recently signed. Until fifteen years ago, the land I was standing on had been largely the domain of poachers and big-game hunters. It is now used mostly for wildlife viewing, as part of the soon-to-be Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, whose Okavango Delta I had come to visit, along with South Africa’s Phinda Private Game Reserve.

The park will encompass an area roughly the size of Italy, and was planned with the help of nonprofits and NGOs to  promote sustainable tourism, bring much-needed jobs to the area, and protecting the land and wildlife. When completed, it will house the largest population of elephants on the planet.

Africa’s lucrative safari business has evolved to make conservation one of the continent’s bright spots, particularly in southern countries. Successful anti-poaching strategies and a transition from big game hunting to more live-animal viewing has allowed native species to thrive, and tour operators are learning that a healthy ecosystem can lure big-spending tourists. Governments, conservationists, and development specialists are now hoping to take full advantage of this lucky market niche, by working with these companies to set aside protected land like the Kavango-Zambezi park. “Tourism is a very, very important component of the overall conservation strategy in Africa,” explains Craig Sholley, senior director of the Africa Wildlife Foundation, an international conservation organization.

My first camp, a series of tents pitched near the Linyanti River, was one of a network run by an outfitter called Wilderness Safaris. Like other tour operators in Botswana, the company leases large tracts of public land from the government, in exchange for doing an astronomical amount of conservation work. I arrived just in time for dinner—baboon steaks and pap, a traditional dish of maize or cornmeal, cooked over an open fire. While sipping South African vintages with a handful of other guests, I admired southern-hemisphere constellations I had never glimpsed before, like Scorpio and the Southern Cross. And before bed, half a dozen staff members, all from a nearby village, sang in Setswana harmonies.

The next morning, I set off with my guide, Thuto Moutloatsi, a 29-year-old South African. We drove for hours through forests of wide-leafed mopane trees and then crossed the Kalahari sands, a sparse desert where the only visible life were steenboks, which looked sort of like miniature deer. By afternoon, we arrived at the Savuti Channel, a dry riverbed that hasn’t flowed since 1982, but is still packed with wildlife attracted to the wide-open grasses.