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When civil war broke out in Mozambique more than 40 years ago, it largely spelled doom for animals in Gorongosa National Park, a 1,500-square-mile reserve on the floor of the southern end of the Great African Rift Valley, in the heart of the country. As the decades-long fighting spilled over into the reserve, many of the creatures became casualties of the conflict.
Throughout the war and even for some time after, food insecurity drove people to kill the animals to feed themselves. The hunting and poaching were hardest on the large mammals. More than 90% of the large mammals in the park were wiped out, said UC Santa Barbara ecologist Kaitlyn Gaynor, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). After the war, a massive recovery effort was launched to repair and restore the park in the hopes that the animals would make a comeback.