Wildlife is abundant in Gorongosa National Park. Situated in the center of Mozambique in southeastern Africa, Gorongosa is home to tens of thousands of animals, including lions, leopards, elephants, and zebras. It is a remarkable sight, given the park's history — and the transformation has not only been for animal residents.
Decades ago, Gorongosa was a world-famous park, renowned for its abundant wildlife. But from the 1960s until the 1990s, Mozambique was rocked by 28 years of war, first as the country gained its independence from Portugal, and then as a civil war broke out between the two main political movements. During the civil war, Gorongosa was often a battlefield; 95 percent of the wildlife was either poached by soldiers and local villagers desperate for food, or slaughtered for profit.
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley first visited the national park in 2008 to follow American entrepreneur Greg Carr, who had spent the last four years devoting himself to returning Gorongosa to its former glory. At the time, Carr was beginning to reintroduce animals to the landscape. The effort was not without its challenges.
Zebras, for example, had to be brought in from Zimbabwe, but that country's political and economic troubles at the time made importing anything impossible. Gorongosa | 60 Minutes Archive 12:53 Carr's grand vision for the park went well beyond animals, however. It also extended to the people living around the park, who were surviving on not much more than a .
