(11 Jul 2018) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus100501
The rainforest of Mount Gorongosa, whose highest peak is 1,863 meters (6,112 feet), is home to pygmy chameleons and other rare species.
The mountain is under severe pressure from the rampant, corruption-fueled deforestation across Mozambique that supplies a foreign market, primarily China.
Scientists estimate that it has lost about 40 percent of its original forest since 1970.
Now local farmers are being encouraged to grow coffee in the shade of hardwood trees, both to improve their own lot and to restore the forest.
However there is a point beyond which visitors are told not to go as the region was the scene of military incursions and civilian flight in the last few years.
There were times when managers of the coffee-and-conservation project couldn't go anywhere near the mountain because of the conflict, or had to walk up because the opposition had blocked the road with logs to prevent the military bringing up equipment.
With a lull in tension, they are pushing ahead with plans to plant more coffee and trees.
The mountain is important to locals as it captures rainfall and supplies the rivers sustaining people and wildlife living around its base.
It is among the more complex conservation efforts in southern Africa, a bid to convince farmers to abandon old-slash-and-burn methods of farming and commit to the longer-term yield of coffee on the same plots, while maintaining government support for a project in an area that harbors an opposition militia.
Randinho Faduco, is a coffee farmer participating in the project at Gorongosa National Park:
"We are currently planting, as well, native plants, forest plants, to restore the forest, that was destroyed during the (civil) war. We are cultivating coffee and native plants, to restore the forest, yes".
The threat of drought and climate change also loom over a project driven by the idea that human development and ecological restoration must work in tandem if there is any hope for both to succeed.
Quentin Haarhoff, a veteran farmer of coffee around Africa acts for a non-profit group founded by American philanthropist Greg Carr that is collaborating with Mozambique's government to rehabilitate Gorongosa National Park, a rich ecosystem whose animals are recovering after war and poaching.
"It is about planting 90 hardwood trees per hectare, reforestation... great. But how else can we improve the productivity in this one hectare of coffee ? And the more we plant in there, the more we stop erosion, the more we can make this place like a sponge and we restore the hydrology of this mountain, because we are retaining water in these small area for much much longer. So the water stays here, infiltrates the soil, instead of running off the surface of the soil, it permeates and it goes down and it rehydrolyzes the river systems" explains Haarhoff.
Scientists settled on coffee as an alternative tool in a broader restoration plan for the mountain because the 90 hardwood trees that are planted for every hectare of coffee provide shade that the crop needs to thrive.
A sustainable mosaic of cultivation and natural forest is envisioned, and farmers are encouraged to cultivate bananas, pineapples and other crops amid coffee plantations, providing fertilizer for the coffee from falling foliage.
The project aims to involve locals and make them stakeholders in their natural heritage.
The scheme is benefiting from a truce between the Renamo (the Portuguese acronym for Mozambican National Resistance) opposition group and the ruling Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) party.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
