War and biodiversity

Project goal: Rebuilding the park, restoring the ecosystem, promoting tourism, creating jobs
Duration: since 2005
Size: the Gorongosa National Park is spread out over 4,000 square kilometers
Funding: a total of $40 million since 2005 invested by American Greg Carr through a foundation

Without insects, spiders and small reptiles, the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique would be pretty empty. These species are the first link in an intact food chain. The park is still suffering the effects of the civil war that decimated its animal numbers and devastated the landscape, laying waste to its earlier ecosystem. Scientists from Harvard are now looking for small creatures in the grasslands and underwood to find out how to reconstruct the park’s animal life and health. Step by step, they’re providing and documenting evidence to show that without insects, no elephant will find its way back into the Gorongosa Park.

A film by Holger Trzeczak