How Gorongosa National Park went from conflict to community

This is article no. 5 in a series on animal conservation. Next article: Emperor penguins, the kings of the ice (coming soon). Previous article: Pangolins: from poached to protected.

Gorongosa National Park was the centre of a dark time in Mozambique’s history, which led to most mammals being hunted and entire species going locally extinct. Over the last 20 years, a public-private collaboration has restored many of these species and made Gorongosa National Park a healthy ecosystem again. In this article, I explore what nearly wiped out Gorongosa’s mammals and how they are doing today.

About Gorongosa National Park

Gorongosa National Park is a wildlife reserve in Mozambique containing grasslands, savannahs, woodlands, and wetlands. It lies at the East African Rift's southern end, making for a complex geological landscape centred around Lake Urema (Figure 1). Lake Urema and the rivers draining into it support a high diversity of herbivorous mammals like elephants, zebras, and antelopes.

Civil war and subsequent recovery

Gorongosa National Park has illustrated the connections between society and ecology for decades. Civil war raged in Mozambique between 1977 and 1992. During this war, both sides hunted without restrictions in Gorongosa for meat and for valuable animal parts like ivory, which were exported to pay for ammunition. This decreased the population sizes of all animal species in the national park by at least 90%. Twelve years after the war ended, an American non-profit called the Gregory Carr Foundation partnered with the government of Mozambique to conserve and restore Gorongosa. The initiative, now called the Gorongosa Project, aims to bring back mammal species which went locally extinct in the war. In addition to providing healthcare, jobs, and education to 200,000 people living near the national park, the Gorongosa Project invests in tourism and ecological research. Ecologists are interested in how different animal species would rebound from the war and how a diverse ecosystem could be created nearly from scratch. By fostering healthy connections between local communities, scientists, and wildlife after the Mozambican Civil War, the Gorongosa Project has become something special.

How different animal species recovered after the Mozambican Civil War

Since mammalian herbivores were the cornerstone of pre-war Gorongosa National Park, their recovery has been prioritised. The populations of most herbivores have increased since the Civil War but at varying rates. Waterbucks, a species of antelope, have dominated Gorongosa in the years following the war (Figure 2). This could be because more waterbuck survived the war in the first place and/or because they naturally reproduced faster than other mammals. Stalmans et al. found that waterbucks were found to be growing as fast as they biologically could, as though they had infinite resources and no diseases or predators. Meanwhile, the populations of larger herbivores like hippos, buffaloes, and elephants, which used to dominate Gorongosa, are recovering much slower than waterbucks (Figure 2). With this change in the herbivore community came changes in vegetation. According to Daskin et al., the amount of land covered by trees in Gorongosa increased by 34% between 1977 and 2012 (Figure 3). This was because there were fewer elephants or other ‘browsing’ herbivores to clear out woody vegetation. Thus, the Mozambican Civil War altered the community structure of herbivorous mammals and plants in Gorongosa National Park.

After herbivores showed signs of recovery, scientists turned to restoring carnivorous mammals. Lions were the only carnivores not to go locally extinct during the war, so they recovered fastest. Between 2012 and 2016, Bouley et al. counted 104 lions in Gorongosa – about half the pre-war count. Following the success of lions, wild dogs were introduced from two different South African populations in 2018 and 2019. Over the following three breeding seasons, 82 pups were born, and dogs originally from different populations naturally formed their own packs. Wild dogs and lions prefer different prey and hunt in different habitats within Gorongosa, allowing both carnivores to coexist. This successful restoration of mammalian carnivores completed Gorongosa National Park’s post-war ecosystem.

Conclusion

After most mammals in Gorongosa National Park were hunted during a civil war, the Gorongosa Project restored a functioning ecosystem by diligently monitoring wildlife and working alongside local people. The park has brought attention to the often neglected non-human impacts of war. Conservationists are optimistic that if Gorongosa National Park’s ecosystem can recover from almost nothing, it is not too late to save other damaged ecosystems. Although Gorongosa’s ecosystem today is dominated by waterbucks, time will tell whether populations of carnivores and larger herbivores will return to their former glory.

Written by Simran Patel

Related articles: Galapagos tortoises / Vicuna conservation

REFERENCES

Stalmans, M.E. et al. (2019) ‘War-induced collapse and asymmetric recovery of large-mammal populations in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique’, PLOS ONE, 14(3), p. e0212864. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212864.

Daskin, J.H., Stalmans, M. and Pringle, R.M. (2016) ‘Ecological legacies of civil war: 35-year increase in savanna tree cover following wholesale large-mammal declines’, Journal of Ecology, 104(1), pp. 79–89. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12483.

Bouley, P. et al. (2018) ‘Post-war recovery of the African lion in response to large-scale ecosystem restoration’, Biological Conservation, 227, pp. 233–242. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.08.024.

Bouley, P. et al. (2021) ‘The successful reintroduction of African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) to Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique’, PLOS ONE, 16(4), p. e0249860. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249860.

Gorongosa National Park (2020) Our Mission, Gorongosa National Park. Available at: https://gorongosa.org/our-mission-2/ (Accessed: 8 December 2024).

Poole, J. et al. (2023) ‘A culture of aggression: the Gorongosa elephants’ enduring legacy of war’, Pachyderm, 64, pp. 37–62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.69649/pachyderm.v64i.518.