A Fragile Equilibrium

Brad and Beca often cross the Pungwe River from Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park to visit the village of Vinho, although they never go together. Their rambles to explore the countryside are solitary and often nocturnal. And if they come across something tasty to eat, they just swipe it up without a second thought. These rascally male elephants often run afoul of the villagers whose crops they take, though the villagers use less diplomatic language: They say “pillage” or “steal.”

Brad M5542 and Beca M5550 are a part of the Gorongosa herd, and are satellite-collared so rangers, veterinarians, and scientists can keep track of their movements. But they don’t believe in the boundaries humans have drawn on a map. The people in Vinho and in the necklace of villages along the Pungwe River, which forms the southern boundary of the park, often wish that the pachyderms could learn to respect those limits, those frontiers between the wild and domestic, since interactions between the two parties range from the benign-but-annoying to the deadly. As do the villagers’ dealings with the buffaloes and the hippos, and, of course, the crocodiles.

Encounters between humans and animals do not have to end in tragedy.