Celebrating conservation success Continued

Pulling a thick wad of notes from her pocket, a woman from the Guengo community proudly shows off the rewards of her hard work. The vegetable patch she’s been tending daily is filled with healthy lettuce heads, soon to be sold for a profit at the local market, generating yet more funds.

“Is that for me?” jests Miguel Gonçalves playfully, raising laughter from other women in the field who are enviously competing to replicate their neighbour’s success.

Joking aside, the project has been yielding pleasing results for communities on the fringes of southern Mozambique’s Maputo National Park. Designed to halt the over-exhaustion of soils by introducing a system of crop rotation, it’s one of several initiatives Miguel has helped set up in his role as park warden.

Combining a terrestrial area running south to the border with South Africa and a coastline washed by the Indian Ocean, the Maputo Special Reserve and Ouro Partial Marine Reserve were amalgamated in 2021 to create a 1700 km² protected area managed through a partnership agreement signed between Mozambique’s National Administration for Conservation Areas and Peace Parks Foundation.

Giving me a potted history of the former hunting concession turned preservation area on a drive from his newly rebuilt headquarters, Miguel describes how