How Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique finally got its leopard
GORONGOSA PARK IS RECOVERING FROM A CIVILWAR THAT WIPED OUT NEARLY ALL ITS ANIMALS FOUR DECADES AGO
Late in November, after three grinding years of begging, bartering, form- filling, false starts and blind alleys, and finally through the added pressures of a pandemic, the wildlife team at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique at last greeted its newest celebrity: a female leopard, 3 1/ 2 years old, from South Africa.
Gorongosa, a wildlife jewel, is steadily recovering from a violent civil war that wiped out nearly all the resident animals four decades ago. The release of the leopard — only the second in the park, after a male was discovered in 2018 — represents one more step in an ambitious plan to return the park’s vast and complex ecosystem to a state of sustainable vigour.
DELICATE OPERATION
The leopard’s travelling crate had been transferred from plane to truck, driven deep into a palm forest in the middle of the park’s 1,500 square miles, and manoeuvred beneath a sturdy Kigelia africana tree.
Workers undid the straps that held the crate tightly closed, tossed a rope that was connected to the crate’s door over a tree branch, and threaded the dangling end through a small opening in a window of a team member’s truck.
“Then everyone hunkered down into safety in their vehicles,” said Paola Bouley, head of Gorongosa’s large- carnivore restoration project.
AWAKE FOR SIX HOURS
The leopard had been stuck in her glorified pet taxi for more than six hours, and because big cats don’t do well under sedation, she had been wide awake the entire time. “We expected she’d just bolt out and disap
The leopard’s travelling crate was transferred from plane to truck, driven deep into a palm forest in the middle of the park’s 1,500 square miles, and manoeuvred beneath a sturdy Kigelia africana tree where she was released as staff kept a safe distance. pear from our sight,” Bouley said. Gregory Carr, an American entrepreneur turned philanthropist who formed a partnership with the Mozambique government to restore Gorongosa, said that instead, the leopard took her time.
“She walked out sleek and stately,” he said. She sauntered like a model on a catwalk, past the cheering human gawkers in their vehicles, past a troop of curious baboons. “For me there was an immense sense of relief,” Bouley added. “It’s been such a difficult year for everyone, but with this we felt like, wow, we achieved something beautiful.”
HUNT FOR A MATE BEGINS
In 2018, when camera trap photos indicated that a male leopard had moved into the park, the team decided itwould push to find him a mate. Eventually, a call came in from private landowners in South Africa eager to remove a female leopard from their property.
Within days, the leopard proved her predatory bona fides by killing two adult impalas. Pedro Muagura, the park warden, christened the leopard Sena, which in a number of languages means Earth’s grace.
There will soon be grace to spare. In December, Carr signed an agreementwith the Mozambican government that will extend environmental protections and local community control around the park by another 1.1 million acres. If the park is going to have a couple hundred leopards someday, Carr said, “they’ll need a place to live.”
WHY LEOPARDS MATTER
Gorongosa today teems with virtually as many herbivores as it held before the war. The lion count keeps rising, and the reintroduction of African wild dogs in 2018 has been a runaway success. But leopards once lived there, too, and scientists working in the park wanted them back.
For one thing, leopards are the primary predators of baboons, which are large and sometimes destructively omnivorous, and in the absence of leopards Gorongosa’s baboon population had ballooned to over 10,000.
For another, leopards are among the most widely distributed of all cats, found in some 75 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. But leopards, like most of the world’s megafauna, are fast losing ground to the needs and whims of the human race. Scientists estimate that the leopard’s range has shrunk by at least 75 per cent to 80 per cent compared with historical norms.