Gorongosa Park signs agreement with Entreposto to convert game reserve into protected area

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Gorongosa Park signs agreement with Entreposto to convert game reserve into protected area

12:19 CAT | 01 Dec 2016

File photo

Gorongosa National Park Wednesday signed an agreement with the Entreposto Group for the conversion of more than 200,000 hectares of adjoining game reserve in the centre of Mozambique into a total protection area.

Under the agreement, Gorongosa Natonal Park will begin joint ecological assessment and environmental impact work with the Entreposto Group, surveying local communities and analyzing tourism potential in ‘Coutada 12’ [Game Reserve 12], which it will present to the government and which may lead to the further enlargement of what is currently Mozambique’s largest protected area.

The agreement, signed in Gorongosa Park, has been under discussion for more than a year, according to Gorongosa Park administrator Mateus Mutemba, and will take a further year to implement.

The document will only be valid with a decree from the Council of Ministers, which is responsible for determining the country’s protected areas.

Mutemba said that everything that had been achieved in the Gorongosa National Park in the ten years since its wildlife was decimated in the civil war could be replicated in ‘Coutada 12’ in terms of local community involvement and employment opportunities, as well as scientific research, monitoring and tourism development.

Greg Carr, the North American philanthropist behind the Gorongosa Park recovery, referred to the possibility that the park could share a wildlife corridor with Coutada 12.

“We do not want to see wildlife imprisoned in Gorongosa park. We do not want to be like the other parks in Africa that are getting smaller and smaller,” he said.

Pedro Palhinha, president of the Entreposto Group, recalled that, before becoming a protected area, Gorongosa was in the 1920s a game reserve for Companhia de Moçambique, currently the group’s holding company here, and said it was “an honour to be associated with this new phase of Gorongosa National Park”.

The ceremony was also attended by rangers and scientific officials of the PNG, university students from Mozambique holding a bioinformatics course in the park and the Portuguese ambassador in Maputo.

Maria Amélia Paiva noted that Portugal is involved in cooperation projects with Gorongosa National Park, pointing out that collaboration goes beyond countries and institutions and involves companies as well.

Source: Lusa