Marc Stalmans, who died of natural causes on August 30th at 66, spent much of his life restoring life to a landscape once stripped of it. As the science director at Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, he was central to one of Africa’s most ambitious ecological experiments: the attempt to bring back an ecosystem gutted by war. Gorongosa had been a battlefield during Mozambique’s civil conflict from 1977 to 1992. By the time peace came, its buffalo had fallen from 14,000 to fewer than 100, wildebeest from 6,000 to 15, elephants from 2,500 to under 200. Lions and wild dogs had almost vanished. The park, once a stronghold of African wildlife, was close to ecological collapse. When Stalmans began working with the Gorongosa Restoration Project in 2006, he saw not just absence but possibility. “On the plant side, it was obvious when we first started that the general habitat was in very good shape. It was just the animals that were missing,” he recalled. With its rich soils, seasonal floods, and high productivity, Gorongosa had the conditions to rebound. What it lacked was the scientific guidance to ensure recovery took hold. In 2012, he joined full-time as science director, providing the data and ecological grounding for decisions about reintroductions, species balance, and land management. Born in Kinshasa to Belgian parents, Stalmans moved to Belgium as a teenager and trained as a forestry engineer before emigrating to South Africa in 1984. He earned a master’s in botany and later a PhD in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed