Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 69
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GORONGOSA SP ECIAL
in Gorongosa National Park; the heat of the day is still a few
hours off. Thick, dog-eared field guides crowd the space between the front seats of
our safari truck; A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa sits on top. The truck
jounces over a few kilometers of bumpy roads with science technician Arquimedes
André at the wheel.
T’S EARLY MORNING
Soon we see fences that section off the savanna into
plots: some accessible to large herbivores, others not.
We have arrived at the site of an ongoing, large-scale
experiment to determine the role of fire and large herbivores in shaping diversity and structure of savanna
ecosystems. The experimental area takes up about 487
acres of the million-acre park, and this morning we are
pulling up to study a chunk of it.
Out of the truck tumbles André, a park ranger toting
a long-barreled rifle, and two students in the Gorongosa master’s science program, Jonatá Joaquim Caminho
and Iolanda Greedes Fernando Marcolino. We stand
at the side of a plot approximately 100 feet by 100
feet—the size of two basketball courts—and Caminho
explains what we are going to do: walk around and
count species we see, logging them in a small journal
and identifying them as best we can. Suddenly, he falls
quiet. A low rumble means a lion is nearby. As soon
as I recognize the sound, I feel glad the ranger has
come along.
André, Caminho, and Marcolino are taking part in
the Gorongosa Savanna Ecology Experiment, which
allows researchers to monitor the presence of large
mammals through intermittent “exclosures”—a
fenced-off area that keeps large creatures out—to test
the effects of early- and late-season fires on nutrient
cycling in soils and vegetation, and on the insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals that populate
them. Tropical chemical ecologist Tara Massad, director of Gorongosa Master’s Program in Conservation
Biology, launched the project in December 2020 as a
platform to train students, mostly from Mozambique,
in doing high-quality scientific research. But it is also
providing invaluable insights into long-standing questions in savanna ecology.
A savanna is an expansive area of mixed grassland
and woodland, with scattered trees that don’t form a
closed canopy. About half of the African continent is
savanna—and fire and the herbivory of large mammals such as antelope and elephants drive the ecosystems, “basically shaping our communities and affecting
the rest of savanna biodiversity,” says Massad. These
two major drivers influence such things as nutrient
cycling in the soil and which plants grow where, as
well as which animals can use the plants to survive,
which makes understanding the system fundamental
for studying savanna ecology—both in Gorongosa and
around the globe.
Caminho’s project aims to understand the foraging
response of birds in areas of the savanna where large
mammals are present and fires have occurred. André is
collecting similar data on lizards and snakes, and Marcolino is setting traps for beetles in this area to understand how they react to fires and herbivory.
André sets a cell phone timer for 20 minutes and
we begin a slow, meditative walk around the perimeter
of the plot, looking for any signs of life. My feet crunch
the dry grass and I strain my senses to see what the
scientists are observing—tiny turns of a white wing
or a fragment of a song, the tail of a small lizard or a
wing of a fluttering insect. Their senses seem honed
to this environment in a way that takes months of
focused practice.
Caminho is looking to identify species of birds but
also to observe what they are doing, and how they are
using their habitat. Are they foraging? Are they resting?
As we walk, he holds a well-worn book with a sky-blue
cover: Roberts Birds of Southern Africa. He tells me that
he has always enjoyed birds. Growing up near the capital city of Maputo, he liked to hear their songs and see
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