Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 42
E N V I RO NM EN T
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GORONGOSA SP ECIAL
Across the world, people who live next to protected areas or wild spaces
in forests, mountains, and savannas face similar challenges. Communities
are grappling with gray wolves in Montana, elephants in India, crocodiles
in the Philippines, exploring possible solutions. Gorongosa National Park’s
human-wildlife coexistence teams both react to animal crises in progress
and work with communities—all to facilitate an entente between the two
parties, if not a perfect peace.
in Chitengo, where Gorongosa National Park has its
main administrative offices and principal hotel, everyone reminded me
to lock the door to my room because animal criminals were afoot. The
Chitengo baboons regularly try all the locks and windows, and if they find
one unlatched, they sneak in and flip the room, opening closets and unzipping suitcases in search of something to eat. During my visit, they often
tried their luck at the breakfast buffet table, too, the one covered with fruit,
bread, and pastries. The table was guarded by one or two men, the homens
da fisga—men with slingshots—from neighboring villages. Whenever a
baboon peeked over the banister and started reaching a hand toward a plate
of cake, one of the slingshot men would ping the animal with a pebble to
chase it away.
One night at dinner, I overheard someone saying that a baboon had
popped into their room while they were out, taking advantage of a window
slightly ajar. It trashed the place, ate a whole bottle of medicine, and disappeared into the bush. (I don’t know what kind of medicine it was, only that
its owner said the baboon was probably dead as a result of eating the entire
bottle.) I went back to my room and checked the windows again. I thought
about the baboon’s visitation when I traveled to Vinho, the closest village
to the park, about a kilometer beyond the Pùngué River. What must it be
like to live every day in such a state of vigilance?
This is where the Gorongosa human-wildlife coexistence program
comes in. Piano Jantar, who works with the nearby villages as part of the
program, said the park is implementing a multi-pronged strategy to help
people in Vinho and the other villages feel more secure. They are building
grain silos made from cement reinforced with metal rods that elephants
would have to work harder to knock down than the traditional ones
made from wood and straw. Jantar said that the program has constructed
more than 500 of these across the region, and at least 150 in Vinho alone.
The silos cut down on accidental trampling by elephants eager to get at
those stocks of grain during the dry season. It’s the equivalent of people
in Chitengo locking their doors to keep the baboons from temptation.
“Another strategy is to strengthen the fences around the river,” said
Jantar, as we walked from the boat launch through a path lined with a
tangle of reeds and shrubs, and then a grassland that slowly transformed
into cropland. The fence, when I finally spotted it, was like no other fence
I had ever seen—not an impenetrable barrier at all, but a series of posts
connected by ropes and, hanging from these ropes, either bits of metal
ON MY FIR ST DAY
Elephants don’t
even need to be
stung but are
scared off just by
the buzz and hum
of a beehive.
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