Animals have returned to Gorongosa National Park after Mozambique’s civil war, but the savanna community doesn’t quite look like it used to, researchers report.
When civil war broke out more than 40 years ago, it largely spelled doom for animals in the park, a 1,500-square-mile reserve on the floor of the southern end of the Great African Rift Valley, in the heart of the country. As the decades-long fighting spilled over into the reserve, many of the creatures became casualties of the conflict.
“More than 90% of the large mammals in the park were wiped out.”
Throughout the war and even for some time after, food insecurity drove people to kill the animals to feed themselves. The hunting and poaching hit large mammals the hardest.