by Sarah A. Wyatt, Biodiversity Analyst, Global Environment Facility
Anyone who had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on your perspective) to talk with me in the month after I returned from Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique heard more than they wanted about lions, impalas and wild dogs (and coffee too, but that’s another story).
The Gorongosa that I saw is home to a profusion of wildlife — large flocks of pelicans and herds of impala and waterbuck are everywhere. At sunset on the flood plain you can see thousands of animals — warthogs rooting around for food, impalas and waterbuck grazing calmly, baboons drinking, and, with a bit of luck, lions resting with full bellies. This doesn’t even count the ten plus bird species feeding and getting ready for nightfall. If someone had shown me a picture, I would have said it was photoshopped.
However, Gorongosa hasn’t always been a nature-lover’s dream. Mozambique’s bitter, decades-long civil war centered in the same province and ravaged not only the people of the region but also its wildlife. Hungry people saw food and groups needing cash saw elephant ivory, zebra pelts and any other number of potential sources of money from wildlife.
The result was a park without wildlife. One Mozambican, whose father was a park ranger during the golden days of the park in the 1970’s, told me that in 2004 they drove around for three hours and the only animal they saw was one baboon. However, even these empty forests still showed the remarkable diversity of ecosystems that are packed together in Gorongosa, which is what any biodiversity lover (like me) will tell you is ideal. A diversity of intact habitats will be home to a diversity of wildlife — if it is protected.
The Gorongosa Restoration Project began in 2004 with the aim of restoring what had been one of the most biodiverse parks on the planet while using it as an engine of sustainable development for the region and the 250,000 people living around it. Restoration at any scale isn’t simple, but this was a lofty dream. Many animals, like antelopes, will recover once hunting stops but others were completely gone or would need some help to come back.
However, growth in herbivore populations without predators to keep them in check can have dramatic impacts on an ecosystem. Predators not only control actual population numbers, but also create a “landscape of fear” (one of my favorite ecological terms) which means that their prey change their behavior because of the threat.
Today while Gorongosa’s lion population is recovering steadily, other large predators such as leopards and African wild dogs are still missing from the ecosystem. This means that their preferred prey, baboons and impala respectively, are enjoying the good life. Hunting and other pressures from people have stopped, so their numbers have risen dramatically and they can be relatively relaxed without their main predators. You don’t even have to leave camp to see them.
But even for impalas and baboons, all good things must come to an end.
The park recently brought in a pack of painted dogs from South Africa and after some time to help them adjust to their new surroundings — they were released into the park. Painted dogs are an Endangered species with a total population estimated to be 6,500 across all of Africa. One pack needs a large area as they can move many kilometers in a day and several packs are needed in an area to maintain genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding. Therefore, they need large parks because they can cause conflict when they start raiding people’s livestock around a park and are killed in retaliation. While the park needs the painted dogs for a healthy ecosystem, they also need large parks like Gorongosa if they are going to survive for many years to come.
I felt so lucky to see these latest additions to the park as they relaxed in the late afternoon. My group wasn’t the only ones to see them as a large male baboon barked loudly attempting to scare off the entirely unimpressed dogs who continued to enjoy their afternoon naps.
However, these baboons will soon have much more to worry about. A couple years ago a leopard was seen for the first time in the park by camera traps and in March 2018 a leopard was first seen by people in the park since the restoration effort began. And leopards love baboons like kids love cake. Park biologists believe it’s only a matter of time before they too will realize that Gorongosa is a paradise and become park regulars.
Restoring healthy ecosystems is a difficult and potentially expensive endeavor, but when the landscape remains largely intact — it can be done. With populations of large mammals and the habitats that can sustain them disappearing around the world, the GEF has to support places like Gorongosa National Park that will safeguard species like lions, elephants and, hopefully, painted dogs and leopards. Long term, the park can be a stronghold for these species and source to repopulate other parks. Similarly, the GEF support is helping Gorongosa be the training center for park rangers from across Mozambique, so they have the skills they need to protect Mozambique’s (and the world’s) natural heritage.
I can’t help but laugh when I imagine old impalas and baboons telling their grandchildren about the good old days in Gorongosa before the painted dogs and leopards came. But, this is the return to a thriving and diverse ecosystem — one step and paw print at a time.
GEF’s work on Biodiversity: https://www.thegef.org/topics/biodiversity
GEF’s work on Illigal Wildlife Trade: https://www.thegef.org/topics/illegal-wildlife-trade
