Photo credit: Peace Parks Foundation
Partner organisation: Peace Parks Foundation
Location: Mozambique, Africa
In the far south of Mozambique, on sub-Saharan Africa’s east coast, lies a designated area known as Maputo National Park. Combining protected land with a marine reserve, and nested within a transboundary conservation project, it exemplifies the holistic approach to ecological restoration that is needed if we are to address the global biodiversity crisis. It has also been the site, during the past couple of decades, of one of the more remarkable cases of nature’s revival – a story of healing in the wake of war.
Mozambique’s civil war
Having secured independence from Portugal in 1975, following a decade of guerrilla insurgency against the colonialist rule, Mozambique was soon thrust into a civil war that would last sixteen years. The level of human suffering during the conflict was appalling, with the death count from famine and other causes estimated to have been around one million, and there was also a huge negative impact on wider nature.
The scale of the ecological devastation is illustrated by plummeting wildlife numbers in Gorongosa National Park, which is a protected area in the centre of the country. A published comparison of population estimates from before the civil war (in 1972) and after it (in 2000) revealed poaching-driven declines of over ninety per cent in the numbers of elephants, hippopotami, and waterbucks, and over ninety-nine per cent for buffaloes, zebras, and wildebeests. In the case of buffaloes, to give some absolute numbers, they dropped from 14,000 to fewer than 100 individuals over that time period. In other protected areas, such as Maputo Special Reserve (now part of Maputo National Park), several species were driven to local extinction.
Photo credit: Peace Parks Foundation
As well as being victims of poaching, wild mammals suffered countless injuries that were more directly related to the conflict. Elephants in Maputo Special Reserve, for instance, are known to have sustained bullet wounds and to have stepped on landmines. There were also reports of their trunks being severed by snares set for smaller creatures. The risk posed to animals straying into southern Mozambique led to the erection of an electric fence on the border with South Africa, along the northern edge of Tembe Elephant Park. As necessary as this was for their protection, the restriction of movement was ecologically detrimental.
Furthermore, the devastation of Mozambique’s large mammal populations had major consequences for habitats and other wildlife. As the naturalist EO Wilson wrote back in 2014, in A Window on Eternity: “Where zebra herds no longer grazed, grass and woody shrubs thickened, and lightning-strike wildfires became more threatening. With no elephants knocking over trees to feed on the branches, some forests increased in density. With the scat and carcasses of big game severely reduced, the population of some scavengers fell sharply.”
To restore Mozambique’s plundered ecologies would take nothing less than a massive-scale, multi-species conservation programme, informed and driven by a network of stakeholders. For the land and the surrounding marine zone that is now Maputo National Park, the foundations for such a restoration were laid in 2006, when Peace Parks Foundation became involved in the area’s protection.
The creation of Maputo National Park
That development in 2006 was one of several crucial steps in the creation of Maputo National Park, within the Lubombo transfrontier conservation area. Another came in 2010, when the governments of Mozambique and South Africa commenced a programme of wildlife translocation to Maputo Special Reserve. A year later, a 24,000-hectare corridor along the Futi River was added to the reserve, securing a crucial linkage to the south with Tembe Elephant Park.
Another leap forward for conservation in the area occurred in 2014, with the management of Maputo Special Reserve and Tembe Elephant Park being brought under a joint management strategy. Then, in 2018, a similar connection was made with the Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve. This link was strengthened in 2021, when Maputo Special Reserve and Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve were officially fused as the new Maputo National Park.
Map credit: Peace Parks Foundation
There are multiple strands to the involvement in Maputo National Park of Peace Parks Foundation, whose goals include ecological protection and restoration, as well as the uplifting of human communities. One of those strands is infrastructural development, and the organization has led the construction and upgrading of entrance gates, park offices, surveillance towers, staff accommodation, a field ranger base, a research and training centre, and other facilities. Another strand is the translocation of wildlife, to reverse the steep population declines that had resulted from poaching and other causes.
Bringing back wildlife
Since 2010, working in partnership with Mozambique’s National Administration for Conservation Areas, Peace Parks Foundation has overseen the reintroduction to Maputo National Park of over 5000 individual animals from sixteen species of mammal, including kudu, impala, eland, giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, and zebra. Aerial surveying indicates that herbivore populations in the park have tripled since reintroductions began.
With herbivores now thriving once more, attention is turning to predators, and one of the most recent reintroduction initiatives has seen a clan of spotted hyenas translocated from Sabie Game Park, augmenting the small remnant population in Maputo National Park.
Photo credit: Peace Parks Foundation
The rapid return of vibrancy to this war-ravaged area demonstrates the remarkable benefits that rewilding can foster. And while rewilders face varied challenges in different parts of the world, the message of hope coming from Maputo National Park is one that is universal.
Wider impact
Since its foundation in 1997, Peace Parks Foundation has played a key role in developing the forward-thinking methodology of transfrontier conservation areas across southern Africa.
Today, southern Africa’s transfrontier conservation areas cover over a million square kilometres of land, rivalling the combined area of France and Spain.
The achievements have resulted from the political will of the region’s leaders, the dedication of both individuals and bodies in government and the private sector, and the continuing support of financial donors across the world.