Famously called “the place where Noah left his ark,” Gorongosa National Park once teemed with African buffalo, elephants, hippos, lions, wildebeests, and all sorts of wild things. But Mozambique’s vicious civil war (1976 to 1992) wiped out most of the animals. What remained was the beauty: a million acres at the southern end of the Great Rift Valley filled with vast savannas, grasslands, rain forests, caves, gorges, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls. Now the beasts are back too. Large animals number nearly 80,000, thanks to the Gorongosa Restoration Project. The public-private partnership leads conservation efforts inside the park and invests in jobs, education, and health care for the people who live around it.
