As a landlocked country of the sub-Saharan region, its topography is covered with sand dunes, deserts, uplands and so forth, spread over three broad regions of: The northern desert zone; the middle zone comprising the semi-arid zone; and the southwest zone which has fertile terrain. It shares its international borders with seven countries, Nigeria, Chad, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Libya, which is a feature which makes the wildlife of the countries cross the borders freely, thus necessitating creation of national parks and reserves managed under joint cooperation programme with some of the countries.