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1 This Once Was an Eden

To succeed, conservation programmes in Africa must take the long view. Sadly, much of conservation investment in Africa looks for quick-fixes and instant gratification. Donor funding cycles force short three- to five-year timeframes, and co-financing commitments from governments are usually shorter, if they ever materialise. The failure of short-term projects are legion. But Africa is full of surprises – even from one of the poorest countries on the continent, Mozambique.

Fifty-plus years ago – in the autumn of 1969 – my wife and I had the good fortune to spend a week of our honeymoon in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, as guests of my colleagues from university days, Ken and Lynne Tinley. Ken was completing a comprehensive survey on the ecology of the entire Gorongosa ecosystem, a classic study that has now – a half-century later – been published (Tinley 2021). During our visit, Ken was focusing his attention on the critical role that Mount Gorongosa plays as the source and driver of the region’s ecosystem services – long before the concept became a key component of our understanding of environmental functioning and management. To demonstrate his ideas, we did a stiff one-day hike up the 1800 m mountain. We heard the calls, but did not see, several of the mountain’s endemic bird species, and marvelled at the altitudinal zonation of vegetation as we ascended the steep, rain-catching mountain face. From the high peak we had a bird’s view of the workings of the vast ecosystem – with Ken describing the intricate meshing of geomorphology, hydrology, habitats and fauna (Figs. 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3).

Fig. 5.1
An aerial photograph of a floodplain lined with trees in the front and forests in the distance.

Gorongosa National Park. View across the Urema Floodplain, with the Cheringoma Plateau in the far horizon. (Photo: Marc Stalmans)

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Fig. 5.2
A photograph of an empty landscape with two trees on the left and right, grasses, and a forest in the distance.

Gorongosa landscapes: Fever trees line the margin of the Urema Floodplain. (Photo: Marc Stalmans)

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Fig. 5.3
A photograph of a mountain covered with forests and grasslands. There are fog-covered mountains in the distance.

Montane forests and grasslands clothe Mount Gorongosa. (Photo: Marc Stalmans)

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What we saw from Mount Gorongosa during our May 1969 visit was a uniquely coherent and pristine suite of African ecosystems – rivers and lakes and floodplain grasslands and fringing fever-tree woodlands, dry thickets and forests, extensive acacia and mopane savannas and brachystegia woodlands, and on Mount Gorongosa itself, ancient grasslands interdigitating between Afromontane forests. The wildlife populations, of impala, zebra, wildebeest, sable, waterbuck, oribi, nyala, reedbuck, bushbuck, buffalo, hippo, warthogs, elephant and numerous predators had made Gorongosa a special destination for eco-tourists in the 1960s. What we did not foresee was the coming revolution, in Portugal and across its many colonies, that brought death and destruction to so many and so much. This was another chapter in the sad processes that characterised political transitions to independence across many African countries during the 1960s to 1990s. By the year 2000 the game population of Gorongosa had fallen to less than 15% of that which Tinley had recorded in the 1960s. For many, Gorongosa National Park (GNP) was added to Africa’s lengthening list of failed protected areas.

2 Serendipity and Good Timing

Gorongosa’s sad story of decline took a dramatic turn in the early 2000s. In 2004, Gregory Carr, an American intel entrepreneur, human-rights activist and philanthropist, visited Mozambique. His purpose was to discover whether there was a way in which he could help the country, one of the poorest in Africa. He eventually met with Joaquim Chissano, the then President of Mozambique, and learned of the latter’s desire to rehabilitate Gorongosa and other national parks in an effort to attract tourists and thus help revitalise the country’s economy. Greg Carr was immediately struck by the possibility of contributing to the dual goals of wildlife conservation and social development that a successful, long-term investment in Gorongosa offered. In 2008, in an innovative and efficient development of partnerships, the government of Mozambique entered into a 20-year agreement with the Gregory C. Carr Foundation for the science-based and people-oriented conservation management of the park – initially known as the Gorongosa Restoration Project (GRP). The agreement has since been extended for another 25 years. The project report for 2021 (Gorongosa Project 2021) describes the remarkable progress made in the decade since the first agreement was signed. The Gorongosa Restoration Project was never meant to be a quick-fix. From the start, it was a long-term commitment. It was a case of ‘think big, start small’.

In 2014, after 45 years absence, I was fortunate to return to Gorongosa. The visit was both depressing and uplifting. The once abundant herds of buffalo, elephant, hippo, zebra, wildebeest and hartebeest had declined dramatically, although they were already in the process of recovery. The proud lions that had occupied some abandoned outpost buildings in the 1960s were gone. But the breath-taking beauty of the Urema floodplain, gigantic lemon-yellow fever trees and staggeringly large populations of waterbuck – now over 55,000 – were scenes demonstrating conservation success after an apocalyptic collapse. Reedbuck, oribi and bushbuck were even more numerous than in the 1960s, possibly reflecting the absence of predators such as leopard, hyena and hunting dog. By the 1990s these species had become locally extinct. Waterbuck numbers skewed the biomass distribution, and indicated the need for strengthening the predator diversity, in addition to reinforcing the herbivore populations. But that was 2014. Actions and results have accelerated over recent years (Fig. 5.4).

Fig. 5.4
A map of Africa highlights the rift valley that runs through the continent on the left. In the middle is a detailed map of the Mozambique region that highlights the rivers, the great rift valley, and national parks and reserves. And on the right is the map of Gorongosa National Park with Lake Urema, rift escarpment miombo landscapes, rift valley alluvial or colluvial fan landscapes, and rift valley floodplain landscape.

Map of Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, in relation to the Great Rift Valley, other protected areas and Gorongosa landscapes. (From Stalmans et al. (2019), PLoS/ONE Creative Commons)

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The Gorongosa Project (GP) – no longer called the Gorongosa Restoration Project – now has a holistic approach to the long-term socio-economic-ecological system. The Gorongosa Project’s 30-year strategy spells out its ambitious vision: “A thriving, biodiversity-rich, Greater Gorongosa conservation landscape, which supports Sofala Province as an engine for resilient and sustainable development enabling nature experiences and wellbeing for its people, enriching all of Mozambique and the world.” By 2019 the park and its adjoining conservation areas were being expanded as land-use agreements and transfers were negotiated, incremental steps towards the grand design of a park extending from Mount Gorongosa, across the Rift Valley and the Cheringoma Plateau to the Zambezi river floodplains of Marromeu and the sea – from the mountain to the mangroves – as originally proposed by Tinley (1977, 2021) in his benchmark ecological study.

3 Winds of Change: Cyclones and Peace

Much of the progress has been due to the dynamic leadership of a strong, competent and committed team of biodiversity professionals. But as with so many conservation projects in Africa, politics and people, not biologists, govern the future of wildlife. Two events during 2019 had major positive impacts on both the development process and public perceptions of the GP.

First, in March 2019 a singular event tested and demonstrated the human resource capacity and community commitment of the GP. A tropical cyclone, Idai, surged inland from the Indian Ocean and brought floods and destruction to much of central Mozambique and neighbouring Zimbabwe (Gorongosa Project 2021). GP team members acted as first responders, backed by the project’s helicopters. Rescue missions delivered food and medical support by foot, canoe, vehicles and air. Over 500 tonnes of food was distributed to 80,000 people. Maize and bean seeds were provided to farmers throughout the park buffer zone to assist in crop recovery. The GP team led the rescue and rehabilitation responses for the people of the greater Gorongosa landscape. The very existence of the park, as a hydrological buffer and sink to much of the flood waters, proved its importance as an ecological service provider to the wider community.

Second, and even more significant for the long-term success of Gorongosa was the historic ceremony, held at the park headquarters, Chitengo, in August 2019 to celebrate the ‘Cessation of Hostilities Accord’ between the leaders of the Government of Mozambique and the opposition Renamo Party. The accord established Gorongosa as a ‘Park for Peace’. Today, a new sense of the possible prevails, where once deep-rooted concern and anxiety had been a shadow over the project.

Fueling the optimism of participants in the GP has been the remarkable recovery of wildlife populations. Stalmans et al. (2019) and Gaynor et al. (2020) describe the rise and fall and rise again of the mammal populations of the park, from the 1960’s peak, to the abyss of 2000, to the new peaks of 2021. By 2002, all species had lost upwards of 85% of their 1960s numbers. But since the implementation of effective poacher controls and the re-introduction of small breeding nuclei of key species, the recovery has been remarkable – as summarised in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Estimates of wildlife species populations in Gorongosa National Park, 1972–2020. (Stalmans et al. 2019)
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The dramatic changes in predator-prey structures (Pansu et al. 2018) have provided a novel opportunity to examine the trophic cascade in the park (Atkins et al. 2019) and the impact on vegetation structure (Daskin et al. 2015; Herrero et al. 2017) and functioning (Becker et al. 2021; Correia et al. 2016; Guyton et al. 2020). The predator-prey imbalances of Gorongosa have been addressed by strengthening the lion population (Bouley et al. 2018), now close to 200 individuals, and the re-introduction of African wild dogs, now over 150 (Bouley et al. 2021). Re-introductions of leopard started in 2019, and a small clan of spotted hyena were released in 2022. In fact, the wildlife populations are recovering so significantly that the park has been able to commence game translocations from its own sable, waterbuck, oribi, warthog and reedbuck populations in the re-wilding of Zinave National Park and Maputo Special Reserve (Gorongosa Project 2021).

4 The Socio-Ecological-Science System

Since 2005, the project has mobilised the investment of more than US$120 million in partnership with multiple donors. Project staff has increased from less than 100 to over 1000, 98% of whom are Mozambican with the majority of them coming from the surrounding Buffer Zone. Health, education and agricultural development activities are touching the lives of 200,000 people in the Buffer Zone around the Park (Easter et al. 2019). It has built four schools, provides bursaries for 37 girls to attend high school, and runs Nature Clubs in 50 primary schools involving over 2000 girls. The GP supports 88 community health workers, 129 traditional birth attendants and 159 ‘model moms’ in the districts adjoining the Park (Gorongosa Project 2021).

Increased emphasis is now being given to community-based natural resource management, drawing on the experience of the Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organisations (NACSO). The GP is taking advantage of the Mozambican Conservation Law of 2017 that provides for the establishment of Community Conservation Areas (CCA) as part of the formal protected area system. CCAs provide communities with the rights to manage resources themselves and the opportunities to benefit from sustainable use of these resources. Maxi Louis and Brian Jones from NACSO have been supporting the work of the GP in assisting local communities to establish CCAs or ‘conservancies’ as the GP is also calling them. An important characteristic of the GP has been its readiness to embrace the advice and experience of colleagues across southern Africa. In 2021, the first three Community Conservation Areas were formally established in the Sustainable Development Zones adjoining the Park (Gorongosa Project 2021).

The GP agricultural livelihoods programme focuses on two objectives – inclusive value chains, and farming for biodiversity. This is best illustrated by the Mount Gorongosa Coffee project. On sites where montane forest had been damaged by past slash-and-burn practices, indigenous trees are being planted to provide shelter and shade for coffee. Where previous slash and burn practices had led to eroded gullies, the planting of indigenous woodland and forest tree species is building a closed canopy which secures the soils and provides shade for the coffee trees. The bird, small mammal and other fauna of wooded communities are returning to the previously barren hillslopes. The activity has accelerated since the Peace Accord, with 200 ha now planted. A record 600,000 coffee trees were planted in 2021. Over 400 farmers are involved, providing a sustainable cash income. Gorongosa Coffee is the first coffee ever exported from Mozambique, with six tonnes of the first crop of over 100 tonnes of green coffee being exported to the United States in 2021. Beyond the coffee programme, GP agricultural extension services reach 10,000 farmers, with specific support for cashew and honey producers.

The science programme is now one of the most dynamic and best equipped in southern Africa, thanks to partnerships with over 30 institutions in the USA, Europe and southern Africa. The establishment of the E.O. Wilson Research Laboratory at the park headquarters, Chitengo, brings with it the prestige of one of Gorongosa’s most illustrious champions. It also provides opportunities for Mozambican researchers to enhance their careers through mentorship projects and scholarships. The research programme includes studies on plant, vertebrate and invertebrate biodiversity. The All-taxa Biodiversity Inventory now exceeds 7500 species (Stalmans and Naskrecki 2019). New species, especially endemics, are being discovered and described (Branch et al. 2017; Janssens et al. 2018). Young professionals study in fields that range from the molecular systematics of ants and amphibia, to elephant ecology (Branco et al. 2019b; Gaynor et al. 2018), the genetics of primates (Martinez et al. 2019) and the exploration of the palaeontological treasures of newly discovered Miocene fossil beds (Habermann et al. 2019). Studies on human-wildlife conflict and mitigation strategies are being undertaken (Branco et al. 2019a, b). In July 2019 the E.O. Wilson Research Laboratory hosted a Wenner-Gren Foundation conference on primatology – the first ever to be convened in Africa. The science programme supports a two-year MSc course in conservation biology. The first two cohorts, each with 12 Mozambican students, graduated in 2020 and 2022. A third cohort will graduate in 2024. A new generation of Mozambican biologists is growing through applied field research in their country’s most iconic landscapes.

5 Enter the Nay-Sayers

The Gorongosa Project has done much to build constituencies and the Gorongosa brand (Stalmans et al. 2018). But like many ambitious conservation projects in Africa, the early days of the Gorongosa Restoration Project were not free of criticism.

One short-term visiting researcher (Schuetze 2015) described emerging narratives – ‘fortress narratives’ – about the tensions between park-based actors and mountain residents. Based on visits to the area in 2006, 2008 and 2011, Schuetze’s study was undertaken during a period of intense conflict between the two political factions that had been at war since 1973 – Frelimo and Renamo. Schuetze suggested that the GP invented a deforestation ‘crisis’ to support their proposal to have the mountain added to the park to protect the forests and the mountain’s rich biodiversity. The assumption by Schuetze that the forests had not decreased in size, nor had such imagined decrease resulted from slash-and-burn cultivation, has not been supported by an objective analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery that showed very significant forest losses, with 45% of the forest having been lost between 1977 and 2021 (Stalmans and Victor 2022). These authors presciently describe the ongoing process of slash & burn deforestation as ‘death by a thousand cuts’. The fragmentation of mature forests into patches is compounded by the drying out of the forest margins, increasing their vulnerability to regular fires.

The volatility of local communities was evident when I visited the GP reforestation project above the Murombodzi waterfall on the upper-slopes of Mount Gorongosa in late 2014. While admiring the robust growth of thousands of young indigenous forest saplings in the well-tended nursery, we were confronted by three armed Renamo soldiers, who asked us to leave. I assumed that they objected to the presence of GP rangers (who they might have considered to be aligned with their enemy, Frelimo), within the area of influence of Renamo. We later learned that the reason for their objection to our presence had no political overtones, but was simply due to the dismissal of one of their members from the reforestation project. The aggrieved party had been involved in the murder of a local villager, had absconded, was subsequently dismissed, and was fearful of arrest. Such tensions within local communities can easily lead to polarised views on and mis-interpretations of rural development projects such as the GP.

The dual-narrative line of argument was expanded in an entertaining and elegantly written but generally cynical book authored by American journalist Stephanie Hanes (2017). Hanes, like Schuetze, takes a short-term view, and a somewhat selective choice of evidence in her critique of the Gorongosa Project. Failure by the GP to take into account and solve the socio-economic problems of the people of central Mozambique within the early years of the original GP is seen as failure of the project as a whole. That centuries-old tensions between tribal groups could not be resolved in the first decade of the GP, and that health, education, communication and agricultural development were not the first priority of a privately sponsored initiative, was characterised as a neo-colonial exercise. In Hanes’ view, once again, Westerners had failed in their attempt to try to help Africa. Greg Carr and the GP team, with fixed mindsets, were considered deaf to the perceptions and stories of the local communities. What Hanes ignored were the multiple challenges of conservation initiatives across Africa, where weak governance, collapsed institutions, corruption, industrial-scale poaching and poverty are endemic. A quick-fix solution to all of Africa’s problems is what many short-term visitors to the continent so earnestly desire. They cynically chose to ignore success stories, such as the GP undoubtedly represents, in favour of seeking failure, large or small.

With the power of hindsight, perhaps the processes of community engagement in the formative years of the GP did not always follow what are now seen as best practises for community engagement. Community relations and partnership development require flexibility, respect, trust, participation, integration, relevance and empowerment (Lichtenfeld et al. 2019). These clear principles are easy to summarise in textbooks, but challenging to implement on the ground. The key elements require years, even decades, to consolidate.

6 Gorongosa as a ‘Human Development Engine’

That the evolving Gorongosa Project has moved beyond the initial challenges is demonstrated in a statement by Greg Carr (2019):

“By reframing Gorongosa National Park as a ‘human development engine,’ we are supporting and enhancing national health services, agricultural programs, and education for local people, trying to lift them out of poverty and create more support for the park in a positive feedback loop—with a special focus on providing more opportunities for women and keeping girls in school.”

As today’s visitors to Gorongosa can attest, actions speak louder than words. What has been achieved since my 2014 visit would astonish any experienced observer of conservation action in Africa. Gorongosa is providing a powerful stimulus for the local economy, in an area plagued by poverty, poor infrastructure, malaria and low agricultural productivity. The Gorongosa Project, as a model of government/private sector collaboration, demonstrates what can be achieved in a relatively short time in Africa. The Mozambique government had the foresight to understand the advantages of partnering in good faith with a private philanthropist. Mutual trust and a common vision built a network of local communities and foreign expertise to rapidly rehabilitate a fractured ecosystem.

With an annual budget of US$16 million, of which 56% comes from foundations, philanthropy and donations, and 44% from cooperation partners (Gorongosa Project 2021), the GP still has a way to go before becoming financially self-sustaining. However, financial independence is a dream that no large protected area in Africa has yet attained. What is more important is that the financial model adopted by the GP is vibrant, innovative and adaptive. Its performance over the decade since the far-sighted partnership agreement was signed between the government of Mozambique and the Greg Carr Foundation is a model for any African protected area to follow.

7 Lessons Learned

In his succinct review of the drivers of success in two very different protected areas – Costa Rica’s Área de Conservación Guanacaste and Mozambique’s Parque Nacional da Gorongosa, Princeton University ecologist Robert Pringle (2017) highlights eight pillars of upgrading and expanding protected areas. With specific reference to Gorongosa, Pringle’s messages can be summarised as follows:

  • Protect remaining refuges, and harness nature’s resilience: GNP provides the core area for the regional programme of biodiversity rehabilitation;

  • Upsize and inter-connect: the GP has negotiated the proclamation of the uplands of Mount Gorongosa as an extension of GNP, and has been commissioned to manage a large hunting concession area and to establish a wildlife corridor between the concession area and GNP;

  • Be long-term and local: the GP set a minimum of a 20-year framework for its public-private partnership, which has already been extended. Its work programme focuses on local communities as the primary stakeholders of the strategy;

  • Pay the opportunity costs: the substantial investments by the GP in education, health care and agricultural extension are key drivers of socio-economic development in the region;

  • Develop creative financial strategies: the initial investment of a private philanthropist – Greg Carr – has been increased multiple times through co-financing and in-kind support from over 20 corporations, NGOs, academic institutions and governments;

  • Know thy biodiversity: founded on the early surveys of Ken Tinley (1977, 2021) – and rapidly expanded by the GP through the activities of the E.O. Wilson Research Laboratory, the knowledge base of GNP is one of the best for any protected area in Africa;

  • Be adaptable: the courage of the government of Mozambique to initiate a public-private partnership with the Greg Carr Foundation, and the willingness of both partners to adopt a ‘learning by doing’ approach, required a large measure of adaptability as new challenges and opportunities arose; and

  • Involve young people: the broad base of the GP’s involvement with local communities, park staff, academics, students and researchers has capitalised on the energies and passion of youth.

What Robert Pringle did not highlight was the availability, within southern Africa, of an extensive network of wildlife conservation professionals and business models that could be adapted rapidly to Gorongosa’s needs and opportunities. Fortunately, the Mozambican authorities took a leap of faith in accepting the support of their immediate neighbours, including countries with which they had been at war for decades. This example of regional collaboration in conservation research and action is one of the many ‘peace dividends’ coming out of the political transformation in the region since 1990. Greg Carr, knowingly or not, seized the political moment while imagining the future.