Gorongosa

"Gorongosa, [blank] was a jewel of Southern Africa...had great populations of lions, elephants, hippos, buffalo, etcetera. Absolutely decimated. So if you went there in the early part of the last decade, in the early 2000s, you might drive for five or six hours and see one warthog, one baboon, [blank] ."Biologist Sean B. Carroll, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spoke March 15th in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union here in New York City about his latest book The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works, and Why It Matters. Gorongosa National Park was ravaged during the Mozambique war for independence [blank] Portugal and then the civil war that followed."And a philanthropist, Greg Carr...was looking for a project to really sink his [blank] into and to work on human development, became also really interested in conservation, learned about Mozambique...and in 2004 committed a sizeable fortune to helping to restore Gorongosa in partnership with the Mozambique government. And in 2004 surveys showed there were fewer than one thousand large animals in the entire park, and this is a massive place. So that's all antelope and elephants, all [blank] , fewer than a thousand of all types combined."And I was there last summer as the new survey came in. A decade later: 72,000 large animals. Dramatic change. I'm looking at elephant herds [blank] lots of youngsters. I'm looking at hippos, groups of hippos.... "So the point is this: the habitat was all there. The large animals had been shot, poached, used for food, whatever, but the habitat was still there and still productive. And once these very small remnant populations had that pressure taken off them, they're just booming. And so a place that, I think it's the one place on Earth I know that's been the [blank] decimated and has seen the greatest recovery... "So there's a lot of stories of good management and of recovery, and recovery in that really rapid time frame. I think that's where I find hope.