Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 53
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GORONGOSA SP ECIAL
Gorongosa, a haven for vultures,
has a smorgasbord of options
for the hungry scavenger.
After Mozambique’s civil war (1976-1992), vulture
researchers like Bishop might not have seen many
vultures. The park had been a zone of intense hunting, and the populations of waterbuck, elephants,
and baboons—all good vulture food—were in sharp
decline. But after nearly 30 years of rest and restoration, big mammal populations have started to
rebound. Gorongosa’s latest animal census found
more than 60,000 waterbuck and nearly 10,000
impala, so the park has a smorgasbord of options for
a hungry scavenger bird.
“Gorongosa seems like a stronghold for a few different [vulture] species,” says Greg Kaltenecker, director of Boise State’s Intermountain Bird Observatory,
who has also been studying vultures in Gorongosa for
several years. The park is a safe haven not only for
the shy white-headed vultures, but also for the more
well-studied and more common white-backed vulture,
which is also critically endangered. White-backed
nesting pairs in the park number in the hundreds.
Bishop and Kaltenecker credit the vultures’ success in the park to Gorongosa’s biodiversity, including its abundant baobab trees, and its dynamism as a
system. In isolation, if they were the only scavengers,
vultures wouldn’t thrive. Vultures have trouble tearing
open tough waterbuck or elephant carcasses on their
own, so they sometimes need a little help from a larger
predator or scavenger. For vultures, Gorongosa’s recent
re-introductions of hyenas and side-striped jackals is
good news. “As those carnivores increase in numbers
and make that food more available, vultures are going to
be able to eat and scavenge and raise chicks and thrive,”
Bishop says.
In previous studies, Boise State researchers helped
tag some of these two vulture species, so they could
track their movements. White-headed vultures stay
mostly within the confines of the park and the buffer zone around it. “It’s uncanny; they seem to know
right where the park boundaries are with a few exceptions,” Kaltenecker says. “Protected areas represent
important habitat features the vultures are keying in
on.” Although white-backed vultures nest in the park,
they can forage thousands of kilometers away, crossing
Gorongosa’s borders and, often, the borders of Mozambique itself.
The Boise State Intermountain Bird Observatory
has been researching vultures in Gorongosa for nearly
10 years, a collaboration between faculty members and
masters’ students from the United States and Mozambique. So far, their discoveries included the whiteheaded vultures’ apparent awareness that they are safer
in the confines of the park, and the vast amplitudes of
the feeding forays of white-backed vultures. Bishop’s
research about nest ecology—identifying and characterizing the nests of different species—is significant
because the information she has produced can help
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