PM urges ANAC to step up fight against poaching – Mozambique

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PM urges ANAC to step up fight against poaching – Mozambique

7:12 CAT | 19 Mar 2018

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Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario on Friday urged the National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC) to step up the efforts to halt poaching, and illegal mining and logging in the country’s national parks and reserves, and other protected areas.

He was speaking in Maputo at the ceremony where Mateus Mutemba was sworn into office as the new general director of ANAC.

The Prime Minister said that ANAC should educate the communities living within conservation areas to respect and preserve the environment. Mitigating the conflicts between the communities and wild life, he added, was one of the ways to conserve biodiversity and improve living conditions.

Rosario stressed that ANAC should administer the protected areas effectively and promote tourist facilities within them.

He urged Mutemba to manage carefully the financial resources put at ANAC’s disposal, and to ensure regular communication with other ANAC staff, stimulating motivation and team work.

anacmuthemba.domingo — *Prime Minister Agostinho do Rosário and Mateus Muthemba. @Jornald Domingo*

Mutemba said that he too was deeply concerned with the threat posed by poaching. The general lines which he intended to follow were “the preservation of our biodiversity, the generation of financial resources for our economy, anD improving the living conditions of communities within and around the conservation areas”.

Mutemba was previously the administrator of the Gorongosa National Park, in the central province of Sofala, which is often regarded as the jewel in Mozambique’s wild life crown.

Gorongosa had been devastated during the war of destabilisation, but during the ten years of the park’s restoration programme, great steps forward have been taken in restocking it. The numbers of animals in Gorongosa, Mutemba said, have now recovered to such an extent that Gorongosa is now sending animals to help restock other Mozambican conservation areas.

There had been notable successes, he said, in restocking the Maputo Special Reserve, which lies on the road from Maputo to the tourist resort of Ponta de Ouro, on the border with the South African province of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Source: AIM