This week on PeaceParks.TV, we visit the town of Mapai in Mozambique, where community members, government officials, traditional leaders and Peace Parks staff came together for the district’s first land use planning workshop.
The workshop is part of a national plan to connect Limpopo, Banhine and Zinave national parks through ecological corridors – natural routes that allow wildlife to move safely between protected areas. These corridors:
- Support healthy wildlife populations,
- Help spread plant life and
- Make it easier for nature to adapt to climate change.
This work is part of a bigger goal: to see people and nature as part of the same system –where community voices are heard, climate challenges are addressed, and humans and wildlife live well in proximity to one another.
“Supporting communities in finding ways to safely live alongside well-travelled wildlife corridors within these ecological linkages, is at the very crux of the matter. We need to focus on prevention and mitigation through effective planning.” says Helena Atkinson, Peace Parks Foundation’s Community Development Programme Manager.
“Led by Mozambique’s National Administration for Conservation Areas (ANAC), with support from Peace Parks Foundation, the plan will lead to the identification of activities that will make these ecological connectivity areas a reality,” says Peace Parks Regional Manager, Dr Bartolomeu Soto.
Estevao Laquene, a Mapai Community Leader, says: “The work being done on corridors is welcome because we know that in the future communities will benefit from this.”
Read more about it here.
Stay tuned to PeaceParks.TV for more on-the-ground updates.
