Gorongosa also is preternaturally lucky to have a wealthy benefactor dedicated to the park’s restoration and future.
Since 2004, Gregory C. Carr, who made a fortune in telecommunications before turning to full-time philanthropy and human rights advocacy, has spent tens of millions of dollars on the park and the 1,300 square miles of so-called buffer zone that surrounds it, where some of the poorest communities in Mozambique, and hence in the world, can be found.
Mr. Carr, 59, is genial, driven and unerringly gregarious, a kind of L. pictus in a baseball cap, always looking for new connections, new ideas for helping the park and its people, new ways to win over skeptics and bridge political divides. Despite recurring guerrilla skirmishes in the region, Mr. Carr said, “I think the park has done a pretty good job of being everyone’s friend.”
His foundation and various donors-in-arms have invested in local schools, mobile clinics, bee farms, sustainable coffee plantations, girls’ clubs, and a master’s program in conservation biology for Mozambican students. The classroom is Gorongosa.
“It’s the only conservation biology program in the country,” Mr. Carr said. “We’re told it may be the only one in the world taught entirely in a national park.”
Yet thorny sociocultural challenges remain. Mr. Carr is a white American with a lot of money, and though Gorongosa is a national park that belongs entirely to Mozambique, Larissa Sousa, who works in the department of human development at the park, said that many people in the region believe Mr. Carr is the owner of Gorongosa, and they’ve never been inside.
