Last month, reports that Angola was drafting legislation to permit oil, gas and mining activities in 14 national conservation areas, including the Luengue-Luiana National Park, which represents part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area stretching across Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe led to protests by environmentalist groups. Local environmentalists were outraged, likely weary of test drilling that had begun days earlier on the Namibian side of the Okavango Delta, an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot.