Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 57
PI OTR NA S KR EC KI
Cutting-edge science can be
challenging in a remote place.
the globe, collaborate with one another on complex
problems, and apply their knowledge to the field
immediately.
Amade Martins Mario Real studied forest engineering at Mozambique’s Institute of Fauna and Ecotourism
in Marrupa, and took part in a weeklong conservation
science workshop at Gorongosa National Park after
graduation. He quickly applied for the master’s program. He was impressed with the fact that the program
provides not merely classroom instruction but also
hands-on, on-the-ground learning and problem solving:
“a world-class tutorial,” he says.
Another master’s student, Jonata Joaquim Caminho,
did his undergraduate degree in ecology and biodiversity conservation at the Eduardo Mondlane University
in the capital Maputo. While he was studying there,
he kept hearing about Gorongosa: “It’s unique in the
world. If you want to be a good scientist, you must go
to Gorongosa,” he remembers people telling him. After
attending a workshop at the park in 2019, he figured: If
he was loving the place for one week, why not try two
years? Caminho now studies the way birds respond to
fire and herbivores on the savanna as part of the longterm Gorongosa Savanna Ecology Experiment.
Gorongosa began its education program with a
2015 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
(HHMI), as a series of scientific workshops and a biodiversity internship program that invited young Mozambican university graduates to conduct research in the
park for a year. But, Massad says, there really wasn’t
any postgraduate training for leaders in conservation
biology in the country. So, she and her collaborators
decided to make one. (The internship program has
continued, now aimed at high school graduates from
the park’s buffer zone.)
The two-year master’s program, also funded by
HHMI, involves one year of coursework and one of
independent research. The first-year curriculum is
Gorongosa has the only master’s program in the
world run entirely within a national park, says Tara
Massad, a tropical chemical ecologist who helped start
the program in 2017. Training conservation biologists
in a protected area gives students a singular perspective on what it means to manage one, says Massad, who
directed the program until March. “Beyond everything
they’re learning in their classes, they know the different
challenges that actually face a protected area. They have
this kind of first-hand insight that a university student
wouldn’t have.”
Students sleep in safari tents pitched on raised platforms, learn from top experts who fly in from around
55
