Gorongosa: Welcome to the Lion House!

Casa dos Leoes.

The Antiga Casa dos Leões, or The Lion House, is nothing more than a small square concrete building, derelict and pock-marked with bullet holes, standing on the edge of a vast green plain. Animals such as Common Waterbuck, Common Reedbuck, Oribi, Warthog and Yellow Baboon dot the plain, while birds crowd the depressions where water lies leftover from the last rainy season, and untold numbers of swallows swarm overhead. It’s a great scene, classical Africa, and somehow the derelict building adds incredible weight to it all. It’s a testament to the history of the Park and the country as a whole, and actually seeing the concrete ruin brings it all home that I’m finally here, in Parc Nacional Da Gorongosa, Mozambique.

Ok, so there weren’t any Lions on the roof of the building, but I’d seen coverage of Gorongosa on television, complete with a pride of Lions on the roof of the Casa dos Leões, and something about the place appealed to me deeply. The building itself was in fact part of a restaurant and park headquarters, built by the Portuguese in the colonial days, but soon abandoned as it was built on a seasonal floodplain which renders much of the park off-limits during the summer wet season. We were at the Lion House on our first morning drive with Rob from Explore Gorongosa, a privately-run ‘eco-camp’ within the National Park. I was accompanied by three birders and wildlife enthusiasts from the United Kingdom, and our goal was to see some of the region’s special birds such as the Green-headed Oriole of Mount Gorongosa, and, on a more basic level, to be part of something new and exciting and to experience something of the pioneering spirit of the place. I’ve written a detailed trip report (you can download the report at http://lawsons-africa.co.za/trip-reports-a-25.html?osCsid=03669dce472c47db1decff58e361505b), including all the bird and animal records for our week-long stay, but I didn’t really have room there to say what I actually thought of Gorongosa.

In one short sentence, Gorongosa was mind-blowing. I’ve visited most of Southern Africa’s big name game parks – Etosha, Chobe, Mana Pools, the Kgalagadi, Kruger and the like – and Gorongosa is without a doubt the most scenic and breathtaking of them all. It’s classical Africa, with wide open vistas; flocks of snow-white Cattle Egrets floating down among herds of animals spread across the vast plains; seasonal pans teeming with water birds (in one view I counted at least 15 Saddle-billed Storks); forests of yellow-green Fever Trees under breath-taking afternoon cloudscapes; dense, jungle-like Borassus Palm savannah where herds of elephants hide… Gorongosa is aptly described as “Africa’s Lost Eden” by National Geographic and is a must for birders, photographers and general Africa aficionados alike.

Birding:

In terms of the birding, the speculifer race of the Green-headed Oriole, which is endemic to Mount Gorongosa, is the undisputed star of the list, and in fact many hard-core birding groups only visit the mountain, skipping out the National Park altogether. Well, we weren’t quite as hard-core as that, and actually spent enough time in the region to enjoy it for what it is while at the same time adding a few specials to our list. We were very lucky with the Oriole, getting some great views on the forest edge rather than in the forest itself, where the canopy is 60 feet above your head. Overall we recorded 211 bird species, which is not bad considering that 90% of our time was spent in one general location. I really enjoyed the ‘epic’ birding around the lagoons and pans, where one could sit for long periods of time observing the bird behaviour and scanning for new species. Some of our group were a little disappointed in not bagging a few of the other specials such as Black-and-White Flycatcher and Chestnut-fronted Helmet-Shrike, but overall everyone really enjoyed the birding experience. For me one thing was clear, and that was that I need to spend more time there to get an accurate picture of the birding scenario. I’m not qualified to make scientific statements, but to me it seems that the huge numbers of Baboons could be having an effect on the numbers of smaller birds, and that brings me to the mammals.

Game viewing:

I would describe the game viewing as good, but somewhat unbalanced. The most numerous species are Common Waterbuck, Common Reedbuck, Oribi, Warthog and Yellow Baboon, and these are abundant. I’m certainly not used to seeing Oribi in large numbers, and the Baboons seem unusually brazen due to the lack of medium-sized predators. Leopards are scarce to non-existent, probably hunted out for their skins, and without them the Baboons seem to have lost their ties to trees and other forms of cover, spending a lot of time right out in the open on the floodplain. They also seem to move around quite a bit at night, which is pretty much unheard of in the Kruger National Park. Warthogs have also benefited from the lack of medium-sized predators, as have Bushpigs, which are also to be seen feeding out in the open floodplain during the day. There are Lions in the reserve, though we didn’t see any, and without many large prey animals such as Buffalo, Zebra and Wildebeest, the Lions probably prey on Warthogs and other smaller species quite a bit, thus behaving more like Leopards than Lions. Cheetah have recently been reintroduced, though of the four original animals only two remain – we saw one of them – but it seems to be an ideal environment for Cheetah to hunt in, with plenty of small antelope feeding on the edge of the floodplain where there’s cover for the Cheetah to stalk and open space for them to run down their quarry. Without Leopards the smaller predators have been able to flourish, and we saw two Servals, Large Grey Mongoose (a lifer for me), Water Mongoose (only the second sighting for me) and had many sightings of Civet and Large-spotted Genet. We saw large herds of Elephants, but kept our distance as they can be very aggressive, which is understandable after years of war and heavy poaching. So overall the game viewing was good, but to me it seems that there are certain imbalances in the whole food chain, which again is not surprising when considering the poaching and mass commercial hunting of previous years. Many people are working hard on the restoration project, so hopefully balance will be restored in the future.

The Bitter-Sweet Nature of it all:

Where once there was forest.

It is very encouraging to see and learn about the transformation of Gorongosa, from battle ground and killing field to a functioning National Park which is attracting a lot of international attention. When people with vision and ability get involved, great things can happen – watch the National Geographic film entitled “Africa’s Lost Eden” and you’ll be left feeling very upbeat about conservation in Africa. However, there’s a yang to the yin of the reconstruction of Gorongosa. The National Park is obviously part of a greater ecosystem, one which is under increasing pressure from man. On the main road from Beira, a large town not too far away, every second or third truck is hauling huge logs for export. On the outskirts of the town large yards are stacked with thousands upon thousands of these logs, where they are cut into thick planks and exported, some say to China. I’m not sure where they are coming from, or where they are going, but somewhere there’s deforestation occurring on a large scale. I’m also not sure about regulations and sustainability, but to the tourist concerned about the environment, it leaves a sickening hollow in the guts. In addition, there’s the charcoal trade which is contributing to the deforestation. In between the heavy trucks hauling giant logs are smaller trucks hauling bags of charcoal to the towns and cities. Cleared areas become machambas, or subsistence agriculture plots, where the locals eke a living out of the now dry red earth. This cut and farm system is occurring high up on the slopes of Mount Gorongosa, which is the water source for the National Park, and thus the entire Lake Urema system is under threat. Throw in talk of a Chinese gold mine in the escarpment to the west of the park, and you have the same bag of threats facing Mapungubwe National Park, Selous, the Serengeti and many other ‘protected’ areas.

I’ll end off with a story told by Rob of Explore Gorongosa, and apologies if I don’t have it quite correct but the point is made: a lady who had lived in Beira during the Portuguese colonial days had the opportunity to revisit Gorongosa recently, having not been to the area since leaving when the troubles started in the early 1980’s. She knew someone who was part of the restoration project, and confided that she was looking forward to the drive up from Beira, where one had to turn on the vehicle headlights during the day as the road passed through a closed-canopy forest that cut off most of the daylight. When she actually got there however, she was struck silent. The road passes through nothing more than scrub and bush interspersed with fields of maize. There’s absolutely no sign that there was ever a forest there….

The photo below is of the Antigo Miradouro dos Hipopotomus, at one time a bustling little restaurant overlooking Lake Urema. Again this old ruin adds a forlorn element to the natural landscape. To see more photos from our Gorongosa trip have a look at the Latest Safari Gallery page on the Lawson's Blog page.

Antigo Miradouro dos Hipopotomus.

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