Gorongosa – Moçambique
In the park that was known as the Noah’s Ark of Africa, Patrícia Brito didn’t spot a phoenix, but she did witness how one of the world’s most perfect wildlife sanctuaries has risen from the ashes.
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In my family albums, some of my favourite photos are of my maternal grandparents, in explorer pose, crossing a ford surrounded by crocodiles and hippos. They date from 1972 and were taken in the Gorongosa National Park during a holiday in Mozambique. Thirty-eight years later, at the gates which mark the entrance to this wildlife sanctuary, my expectations of running into one of the “Big 5” (lions, rhinoceros, leopards, elephants and buffalos) are not high, but the emotion of venturing into their habitat is as big as the 3,700 square kilometres of forest, savannah and grassland before me.
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When it was granted the status of National Park in 1960, Gorongosa had 14,000 buffalo, 200 lions, 3,000 zebras and hippopotamus, 5,500 gnus, 2,200 elephants and hundreds of other species, including impalas, cheetahs, rhinoceros and birds and animals whose names don’t even enter the collective imagination. With more predators than the Kruger Park in neighbouring South Africa and scenery as stunning as the Serengeti in Tanzania, Gorongosa welcomed 20,000 visitors a year, including film stars like Gregory Peck and John Wayne.
During the devastating civil war which followed the independence of the ex-Portuguese colony in 1975, and which lasted 16 years, this earthly paradise was abandoned to its fate and largely decimated. When the park directors returned, 95 per cent of the mammals had been hunted to feed the famished human population, to extract ivory or had died of hunger when the balance of one of the most perfect ecosystems on the planet broke down. In order to survive, the few elephants that remained had become nocturnal.
Reborn from the ashes
The job of saving this beautiful natural environment fell to Greg Carr, an American millionaire who in 1998 created the Gregory C. Carr Foundation to devote himself to philanthropic work. Not long afterwards in 2002, while flying over the park’s spectacular landscape in the centre of Mozambique, Greg realised that Gorongosa was a good way of achieving one of his life’s ambitions: a challengng project to recover not only the park’s wildlife but also develop its local communities.
The first step was taken in 2004, when the foundation negotiated a partnership with the Mozambican goverment – extended in 2008 for another 20 years – and an investment of 30 million euros, for the joint management of the park and the creation of sustainable infrastructure. A few years later, the fruits of this labour are clearly visible. With the restoration of Gorongosa and the conservation of habitat, the animals are returning. Some were donated by neighbouring parks, others purchased in order to reestablish the balance of this delicate ecosystem. Meanwhile, the local population, around 250,000 people, have benefited with schools equipped with computers and training in the techniques of sustainable agriculture. The future, however, lies with ecotourism. At present there are around 8,000 visitors annually, but when the park recovers all of its biodiversity and becomes an integral part of travel agents’ brochures, 100,000 are expected.
Seated on the back of a worn-out truck which takes me through the “backyard” of lions, gnus, pala-palas, elephants, pelicans and spitting snakes, I find it hard to take in all the twists and turns, the sounds and smells coming one moment from the savannah, the next from the forest, then from the muddy grasslands around the still waters of Lake Urema. The contraction of the lake in the dry season and its expansion during the rainy season is one of the vital elements of this ecosystem, but what fascinates me is the sheer variety of birds here, the dazzling colours of the savannah lit up by the sunset, the inexplicable feeling of loneliness, of chance meetings. Suddenly, the guide spots a pangolin, a real rarity which causes much ooh-ing and ah-ing amongst the Swedish tourists. In my ignorance, I thought we were in the presence of an anteater.
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By Patrícia Brito
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