Pendjari National Park is a savanna of dry woodland, floodplain and rock in the Atacora department of northern Benin, on the border with Burkina Faso, holding a quarter of all the West African lions that survive, and it has been closed to visitors since 2019, when two French tourists were kidnapped there and their guide killed, so that the park is now known for what it holds rather than for what can be seen. The lions of Pendjari are not the same animal as the lions of the Serengeti but a distinct population closer in kin to the lions of India, fewer than 400 left across West Africa, and the park with the neighbouring reserves of Arly and W is the last block where they can live; northwest African cheetah still cross the savanna, so few that researchers count them in single digits and go years between confirmed photographs, and the elephants, buffalo, roan and hartebeest are the largest herds left in the region. Family groups of elephants file between stands of Borassus fan palms on their way to the water, ears out and silent on the sand, and the rock outcrops of the Atakora chain on the southern edge lift the viewer just above the canopy.
The dry season is when the park showed itself. As the mares shrink to a few muddy hollows in March and April, everything needs the same pool, and the elephants, buffalo and antelope crowd the last water with the lions and hyenas working the edges, while the Palearctic migrants, storks, waders and raptors, settle on the shrinking pools with the spur-winged geese; the park counts some 300 species of bird. For decades its safety rested on a bargain with the villages around it, which policed the bush and took a cut of the money it earned, and since 2017 it has been managed by African Parks with rangers and fences, through the insurgency that spread from the Sahel across the border. Pendjari is the last lion country of West Africa, and for now it is watched by rangers rather than visitors.