Bringing Back the Lions: International Hunters, Local Tribespeople, and the Miraculous Rescue of a Doomed Ecosystem in Mozambique

By Mike Arnold

This book is the never-before-told story of the dream to set up camp in a vast African wasteland and return it to its former glory as one of the world's premier wildlands.

Outdoor writer Mike Arnold takes us on an impressionistic journey through Coutada 11, a once again magnificent natural area in Mozambique's Zambeze Delta. Mike leads us

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arnold Outdoor Writer, LLC
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986006017

Mike Arnold

Mike Arnold has been a life-long hunter. The Hunter's Horn blew very early for him. From the age of five, Mike has spent months each year pursuing game animals-from quail and rabbits behind his parents' house to kudu and leopard in Africa, and Brocket deer in Mexico. Mike has more than 150 published articles, including feature pieces in Sports Afield, Hunter's Horn, Safari Magazine, and African Hunting Gazette. Mike also produced two TEDx presentations on the topic of conservation-through-trophy-hunting. Combined with his love of the outdoors, hunting, and conservation is his passion for science. Mike is a Distinguished Research Professor of Genetics at the University of Georgia. He has published hundreds of research articles and four books on topics including conservation biology. Publications such as Science Magazine, The New York Times, and National Public Radio continue calling Mike for interviews covering his research. Mike lives in Georgia with his wife Frances. Their cat abandoned them after 16 years, they have no plans to ever have a pet again.

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Preface

The Invisible Line

As the helicopter skimmed over the Mozambique landscape, I craned my neck to watch for animals. As soon as we cleared the concrete and bare dirt of the city of Beira, I expected to see zebras, hartebeests, Cape buffaloes, and more moving across the landscape.

Instead, huge clearings stretched to my right, left, and front. Pete, the pilot, explained that the cleared areas were ever-growing, the fires throughout the region we flew over reflecting charcoal production by local villagers.

The trees were disappearing, and along with them the other native plants that needed their shade. Gone also were the animals that nested, burrowed, or scurried in the highest branches or lowest undergrowth. Long gone were all the major protein sources, including the large animals I was hoping to see.

And suddenly, they were there. It was as if we crossed an invisible line, or one of those underground electric fences. Not only herds of zebras, hartebeests, and Cape buffaloes, but also waterbucks, reedbucks, oribis, and even elephants and hippos moved across the waterlogged landscape. Two species made a particular impression. As we slowly circled above a herd of Cape buffaloes, the first I had ever seen, a huge flock of cattle egrets lifted and formed a cloud of brilliant white in the rays of the setting sun.

The second wonder were the waterbucks. The white circles, resembling bull’s-eyes, on their back ends were incredibly clear, even from 500 feet up. Hundreds of them were standing out in the floodplain. In the fading sunlight, they appeared ochre-colored. Were they red, or was it a trick of the light?

I would come to understand the substance of the invisible line. I would find that it depended on the local villagers’ full bellies, employment, and empowerment; just as much, it depended on protection against marauders who would unthinkingly tear apart the environmental web. On one side of the line, no animals, few trees—a moonscape; on the other, a solid canopy of trees broken by the occasional natural clearing, containing a super-abundance of wildlife. The line reflected the restoration and protection of many ecosystems.

Not coincidentally, the invisible line also separated Sena hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers from a previously unheard-of category of their brethren: a rural population of middle-class shopkeepers, cash-crop farmers, and employees of the safari industry, an industry that caused the transformation of ecosystems and Sena villagers’ lives.

I had forgotten the truth. In wild Africa—just as in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia—you encounter wild animals only where they are more valuable alive than as food. Ironically, because a few animals do die, there are vast numbers of game animals in regions of wild Africa where safari hunters pay for them. Whether in Africa or North America, game animals must have a value above and beyond their meat, and the ecosystems within which they exist must have a value above and beyond being potential sites for farms, houses, and golf courses. If not, wildlands disappear.

It would take weeks of traveling around the hunting concession run by Zambeze Delta Safaris, known as Coutada 11, before I would begin to understand the revolution wrought by the vision and passion of the people involved. The men and women here are standing in the way of development. Otherwise, this myriad of ecosystems would be gone; animals poached to extinction, the land slashed and burned for growing crops and producing charcoal, just as it is on the other side of the invisible line. The model of conservation-through-hunting works when nothing else will. Even photographic tourism, with its associated infrastructure of roads and hotels needed to ferry and house the swarms of tourists, leaves an enormous carbon footprint compared with hunting concessions, which host a fraction of the number of visitors.

There was no sharp demarcation when we finally approached Zambeze Delta Safaris’ Mungari Camp. There was only a small break in the canopy. Even the grass landing strip, long and wide enough for large twin-engine planes, did not look out of place. It was merely another open field containing the evening’s guests: warthogs, red duikers, sunis, and reedbucks. As we zoomed in, they acknowledged the noisy helicopter with a brief lifting of their heads from the grass on which they grazed. The term unafraid jumped into my mind. But how could that be? These animals lived in the middle of a hunting concession; an area that had always been a hunting concession. How and why these animals were so relaxed would take some time to understand.

Key revolutionaries in the transformation of Coutada 11 include business partners Mark Haldane and Carlos Pacheco Faria. They are two people from completely different backgrounds: Mark, a South African professional hunter, and Carlos, a non-hunting, Portuguese/Mozambiquan hybrid, but they share a common passion to see Coutada 11 reborn as a place of incredible natural beauty, working closely with empowered Sena natives who believe in ecosystem restoration and conservation. Joining Mark and Carlos in the long and tough restoration exercise are friends and fellow visionaries, including Mary Cabela, Ivan Carter, and Vincent van der Merwe. Each brings their own special skills and contributions, but all bring passion to the fight to renew this portion of Mozambique’s wildlands. These are some of the characters, along with countless staff members, local shopkeepers, teachers, clinicians, and others, who have spent countless hours and expended incredible energy to first stabilize, and then increase, the quality of the wildlands and peoples’ lives in this region of Mozambique. These are the stories told here.

Introduction

Death of a Few, Salvation of Many

There are five main ways that humans can utilize undeveloped African landscapes: settlements, farmland, mining operations, logging, or tourism. Only tourism has real potential for conserving natural areas and retaining wildlife. In fact, many people argue that photographic tourism is the best method for maintaining wildlife and their habitats. However, as pointed out by noted conservationist Ivan Carter, developing an area for photographic tourism often leads to significant environmental degradation.

Ivan uses the example of South Africa’s Kruger National Park. He asks, Is it sustainable to dig bore holes that pump huge quantities of water to the surface to attract the animals so that tourists can photograph them? And is it possible to maintain a huge network of roads to transport tourists without major environmental disturbance? The answer to both questions is, of course, no. This does not mean that photographic tourism is a poor use of African landscapes, but many people may be surprised to learn that there is a far less destructive type of tourism: safari hunting, aka tourist or sport hunting. A model system for this less destructive path comes from the Marromeu Complex of the Zambeze Delta of Mozambique.

Safari hunting has a long history in Mozambique. Coutadas, numbered hunting blocks or concessions, created by Portuguese colonial legislation in the 1930s as a means of regulating the take of game, consolidated into 17 hunting areas by the 1970s.

Until the early 1970s, Mozambique was a paradise for those seeking animals such as sable antelopes, greater kudus, nyalas, and Cape buffaloes. Legendary professional hunters including Adelino Serras Pires, Werner von Alvesleben, and Wally Johnson led paying clients from Europe and America in search of game in the various Coutadas.

Historically, Mozambique was one of the principal tourism destinations in southern Africa, celebrated for its superlative national parks, tropical beaches, and multicultural cities; the country attracted nearly 400,000 visitors per year. The war for independence from Portugal, ending in 1975, followed by the civil war from 1977 to 1992, disrupted the entire tourism industry, including safari hunting. During these two periods of conflict, massive and widespread poaching drove wildlife to extinction in many areas.

The slow rebuilding of the tourism industry began after the 1992 peace accord signed by rebel and governmental leaders. It took 20 years before Mozambique tourism began to demonstrate some recovery. The hunting industry followed along with the reconstruction of general tourism. Although the resurgence of sport hunting took less time than general tourism, it was not until the beginning of the new millennium that there was a significant upturn in numbers of visiting hunters. By 2012, the Mozambique government, under the auspices of the Direção Nacional de Areas de Conservação (National Directorate for Conservation Areas, or DNAC) and Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG), had designated 90 areas for hunting, including Coutadas, game farms, and Provincial Hunting Reserves. The nearly 34,000,000 acres set aside for hunting makes up 17 percent of Mozambique’s entire landmass, an area larger than the state of New York.

An epicenter of Mozambique’s hunting industry exists in the environs of the Zambeze River. By the mid-2000s, a total of eight Coutadas (Nos. 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) extended south of the Zambeze waterway. As a result of the income provided by visiting hunters, each of the Coutadas in this region regained numbers of game animals and restored habitats lost to subsistence agriculture. However, not all Coutadas were equal in their quality of management, with some making much faster progress in ecological restoration than others. Yet, without the reconstruction of the hunting industry, habitat loss to meat poaching, charcoal production, and subsistence agriculture within the millions of acres included in these eight Coutadas would by now be total. Simply put, investment in these areas by the hunting concessionaires funds anti-poaching efforts and places limits on habitat loss through deforestation.

The Marromeu Complex, encompassing 2.7 million acres, covers the southern half of the Zambeze Delta. The Complex consists of the Marromeu Buffalo Reserve, two forest reserves (Reserva Floresta de Nhampacue and R.F. de Inhamitanga), four hunting concessions (Coutadas 10, 11, 12, and 14), and large commercial agricultural enterprises such as the Sena Sugar Estates, as well as villages and their associated agricultural lands. Hunting concessions make up around 75 percent of the Marromeu Complex. The ecological and social restoration wrought by these concessions has been nothing short of miraculous. Coutada 11, especially, illustrates how of all the uses for African landscapes, safari hunting leaves by far the smallest carbon footprint and provides the greatest opportunity for the resurrection of entire ecosystem networks.

During the horrific 15-year civil war, people in rural Mozambique had little food, and there were few jobs available, especially in the countryside. Anyone living in the Marromeu Complex of the Zambeze Delta relied on subsistence farming and poaching with homemade snares to ward off starvation. But there was never enough nourishment, particularly protein. Children suffered from chronic malnutrition and severe protein deficiency, or kwashiorkor, a visible sign being their terribly bloated bellies. Villagers did not worry about the consequences of the poaching or the extensive destruction of the forested areas through slash-and-burn agriculture; they were desperate for food of any kind. Eventually, the war came to an end, but food and jobs were still lacking in the villages of the Zambeze Delta region. Poaching and subsistence farming remained the only means available to the local people to bring in even a meager supply of nutrients for their families.

In 1994, a group of businessmen and women arrived from the capital city of Maputo and from neighboring South Africa. They sat down and spoke with the villagers of Coutada 11. They explained to them that they had a vision to restore not only the villagers’ lives, but also the ecosystem within which they lived. These newcomers went on to paint a picture of how they would accomplish this resurrection of lives and wildlands. They emphasized that only by working together would change be possible.

The newcomers pointed to the first step in the chain that could, with much work and persistence, lead to the realization of their nearly unimaginable vision. This first step was the provision of a consistent supply of protein. Like the meager amount of protein brought in by the villagers’ poaching, the source would be wild animals. However, rather than indiscriminate killing of animals, visiting safari hunters would secure the animal protein by taking a few, selected animals. All the meat from this closely regulated hunting would go to feed the local villagers. The goal was to provide 10 pounds of meat per week for each of the local families.

After knowing only deprivation and hunger, it is understandable that the villagers didn’t trust the outsiders’ promises. So, the second step in the restoration process was equally important. The outsiders told them that they would use the funds provided by the visiting hunters to hire anti-poaching teams and staff for their camps. Who better to describe to the international visitors the wonders of the Zambeze Delta than those who had grown up there? And who better to protect the animals from poachers than those who were former poachers themselves? Thus, they began hiring the locals; for most of the villagers, it was their first experience with steady employment.

Over time, the villagers’ doubts transformed into belief. No longer did they have to worry about their children or themselves going hungry. Not only was 10 pounds of red meat provided each week, but abundant fish protein was also available through a regulated fishing program begun by the Coutada 11 safari operation. Likewise, to end the slashing and burning of forests for growing maize and other plant-based nutrients, the outfitters developed a community agricultural field. A 2016 study by the National Institutes of Health still identified malnutrition in Mozambique as a serious concern, with around 40 percent of all children chronically malnourished. However, this is no longer the case in Coutada 11. Here, children and their parents are well-fed and enjoy a much healthier existence.

With poaching controlled through funds supplied by hunters, animal populations in Coutada 11 have grown from near-extinction to carrying capacities and beyond. When safari operations began, sable antelopes, waterbucks, and zebras were nearly impossible to find; few had survived the intense poaching during the battles for independence and the civil war. The recovery of these animals clearly illustrates the impact of the anti-poaching efforts supported by the funds from international hunters. Since 1994, the year safari hunting recommenced in Coutada 11, sable antelopes have increased from 30 to 3,000; waterbucks from a few hundred to approximately 25,000; zebras from a mere eight to more than 1,200. Hunters not only provided funds for conservation of existing game animals, they also funded reintroductions of species extirpated by humans. Lions and cheetahs now roam the landscape of Coutada 11 and the Marromeu Complex.

The ecological benefits from money provided by passionate hunters impacted not only game animals, but songbirds, trees, frogs, and insects as well. Hunter funds are the fuel driving the engine of conservation of huge tracts of wild Africa within the Zambeze Delta. Pristine sand forests, pans, miombo woodlands, floodplains, and marshes flourish under the Mozambiquan tropical sun. Through the death of a few animals comes the salvation of the many.

CHAPTER 1

From the Ashes

The civil war between the FRELIMO government and RENAMO has been exceptionally brutal. Massacres, mutilations, the forcible relocation of population, and the forced recruitment of soldiers—many of them children—have been characteristic of a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.—Human Rights Watch, CONSPICUOUS DESTRUCTION—War, Famine, and the Reform Process in Mozambique

Carlos Pacheco Faria’s voice dropped in volume and register as he shook his head sadly. The devastation to human lives, the country’s infrastructure, and the Zambeze Delta’s wildlife was total. There were unburied bodies scattered in the forest, but when the war ceased in 1992, no living people remained other than leftover soldiers from the resistance force known as RENAMO. It was a wasteland, a void. There were many more bodies of dead soldiers and local villagers than there were animals left in the entire Marromeu Complex at the time the peace accord was signed in 1992.

Born on June 29, 1946, in Maputo, Mozambique, to a Mozambiquan mother and a father from Portugal’s Azores Island chain, Carlos’ love for his home country is palpable. The pain of witnessing the horrors of the 15-year-long civil war is evident in his words and countenance. But the sadness he still feels when he thinks about the state of Mozambique at the end of the long conflict belies the fact that he is a natural optimist and visionary.

Carlos’ training is in marketing. In 1975, when Mozambique gained independence from Portugal, he was selling Caterpillar machinery worldwide from his base in Maputo. By the end of the civil war in 1992, Carlos had changed paths, founding a three-pronged tourism development company that included hotels, resorts, and safari hunting. The inclusion of the last of these is interesting, given that Carlos doesn’t hunt or fish. When asked why he doesn’t participate in these sports, he smiled. To do either well, you have to get up too early, and work too hard.

Carlos and I were relaxing with afternoon coffee in the open-air dining room in Mungari Camp, one of two camps in the Coutada 11 hunting concession run by Zambeze Delta Safaris (ZDS). The beautiful setting and luxurious accommodations at Mungari reflect Carlos’ willingness to see past the devastation of 1992. In fact, Carlos believed so profoundly in the possibility of human and ecosystem resurrection that in July 1992, he purchased the rights to set up hunting in Coutada 11 from the Mozambiquan Ministry of Agriculture. As he left the governmental offices, the words of friends who called him crazy for