Snapshot Mariri

Niassa Carnivore Project

The Niassa Carnivore Project is a holistic conservation program with a mission to promote coexistence among large carnivores and people in Niassa National Reserve (NNR). We have been working here for 15 years in close collaboration with the Mozambican Government, Niassa Reserve Management authority, and the local communities that live inside NNR.

Our vision is to see the Niassa Reserve grow into a conservation area where large carnivores thrive with the full participation and support of Niassa’s local people. As you look at the camera trap images, you will sometimes see people using the same paths as animals. One minute a person is collecting grass, and the next moment an elephant is using the same path. Typically these are not poachers – these are the day-to-day activities of the local people who live inside this extraordinary protected area. These people are an essential part of successful wildlife conservation, and this camera trap survey will help to demonstrate that. Sometimes we get people dancing in front of the camera, showing off pictures they have drawn, or taking a selfie. On rare occasions, we have inadvertently taken pictures of poachers with ivory. Niassa has lost more than 10,000 elephants to poaching since 2010.

At present, Niassa is home to 800-1000 lions, 350 wild dogs, leopards, and hyenas. 40,000 people live here, spread across more than 40 villages. Our current conservation efforts are focused on lions, leopards, spotted hyenas and African wild dogs, but we recognize that conserving these animals means protecting their prey and the habitats they depend on. Some of the most significant threats to these species – bushmeat snaring, retaliatory killing, poison, and habitat degradation/transformation - are present in the Niassa wilderness. Large carnivores function as a kind of, “thermometer,” measuring the health of the ecosystem.

© S. McConnell

Our long term goals are threefold. Over the course of the next 25 years, we aim to: secure the large carnivore populations by directly reducing their threats; to provide an effective, focused, and locally derived environmental education and skills training program for the people who live inside Niassa Reserve; and to develop a model where communities can participate in conservation and be part of the solution (see our website for more details).

We are a community based initiative, and we are currently running conservation programs that combat poaching, develop community partnerships with performance payments, provide alternative livelihoods (honey, small livestock, craft and design, conservation tourism), increase food security through conservation agriculture, and implement environmental education programs(wildlife clubs, secondary school scholarships, bushvisits).

Where We Work

Niassa National Reserve (NNR) is located in northern Mozambique, with its northern boundary the Ruvuma River bordering Tanzania. Niassa National Reserve covers 42,000 km2 – an area larger than Switzerland.

NNR is recognized as the most important protected area in Mozambique, and it is of profound importance for the global conservation of African wildlife, especially for the African lion, wild dog, and elephant.

The Reserve is currently co-managed by the Ministry of Tourism (MITUR) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). To assist in management, NNR is divided into 17 management concessions, with nine concessions designated for sport hunting and four currently leased for ecotourism. Biodiversity surveys have revealed a species-rich and largely intact ecosystem of miombo woodlands, rivers, inselbergs (granite “island” mountains), wetlands, and plains. More than 14,000 elephants and 13,000 Sable antelope are protected here. Niassa also supports rare birds like the Taita falcon, African skimmer, Dickinson’s kestrel and Angola pitta as well as an endemic reptile, the Mecula Girdled Lizard. Rhino are locally extinct in Niassa Reserve, and cheetah, caracal and roan antelope have not been recorded here.

Threats to Wildlife and Conservation Challenges

Increases in elephant poaching, timber logging, habitat transformation, population growth and bush meat snaring are some of the pressures on the Reserve and its species. Aerial surveys show that 10,000 elephants were killed between 2010 and 2014 in Niassa Reserve. Niassa Reserve also supports a growing human population. The future of Niassa is as much about its people as it is about the wildlife. With limited educational services available to them, and few ways to acquire marketable skills for outside employment, most families rely primarily on consumptive use of the available natural resources, particularly by fishing, gathering and selling honey, selling tobacco, trading in large cat and zebra skins, selling ivory and eating and selling bushmeat or wild meat.

Camera Trapping

Our camera trapping is currently focused in the south eastern section in two concessions: L5 South and L4 east – an area of 1500km2. SnapshotSafari will help us to analyze the data efficiently through citizen science, which will hopefully allow us to expand the grid to other areas. At the moment, we are limited by our ability to access all the cameras and process the images.

We are currently using our camera traps (motion activated cameras) to assess the effectiveness of our conservation programs. In addition, we use the pictures from cameras around villages as incentive for conservation actions but linking them to performance payments. For pictures taken of specific animals, communities earn points that are converted to money for community conservation funds. This program follows the program developed by the Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania and is a Pride Conservation Alliance collaboration. We place the cameras in 2km x 2km grids, at waterholes, and around villages inside the protected area. Sometimes we get amazing pictures that we don’t expect, like the images below:

Visit Niassa

Find out more about Niassa National Reserve on its website. If you are interested in visiting here, there is one high-end eco-tourism camp called the Rani Resorts – Lugenda Camp.

Contribute to Niassa Carnivore Project

At the Nisassa Carnivore Project, we greatly appreciate the time and effort you put in to identifying out camera trap photos. If you are interested in helping out Niassa Carnivore Project even further, please consider making a donation to our project here!

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