The Thin Line |Niassa, Mozambique

Niassa is a place defined by scale and it feels almost prehistoric. A sweep of miombo woodland interrupted by enormous inselbergs that rise abruptly from the earth, as if pushed up from some deeper time. The scale is disorienting - too vast to take in at once, too open to feel contained. In the conservation world, the phrase “last great wilderness” is thrown around with ease; here it carries weight. This place truly feels like nowhere else.

Yet Niassa’s immensity is matched by its vulnerability. Its borders porous, within a region shaped by decades of instability and constant movement across the region. For ranger teams tasked with holding the line, the challenge is not dramatic confrontation but the sheer distance of the work itself. Limited resources must stretch across an area so large that protection becomes a matter of endurance - steady, unglamorous, unobserved.

Wildlife endures here in quiet strength: cautious, scattered, shaped by an old history of pressure. Niassa is rich, but not necessarily in the ways that draw visitors. It is hard to reach, hard to market, and hard to fund. It’s a landscape that offers few easy rewards, yet is vital precisely because it carries an importance that far outweighs its appeal.

A landscape that does not sit in the spotlight. Even so, its stability depends on steady, unseen work.