As a keystone species, elephants help maintain the integrity of entire ecosystems, which in turn deliver climate regulation benefits and resilience to climatic shocks. Ecosystem integrity helps achieve long-term goals for the conservation of wild places and the delivery of ecosystem services, both of which are critically important to the well-being of the elephants and people sharing the landscape.

Mozambican ecologist Dominique Gonçalves leads the Elephant Ecology Project (EEP) in Gorongosa National Park, where she investigates elephant movement and range expansion in relation to habitat use and Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC). Working with law enforcement and sustainable development colleagues, she aims to build coexistence between communities and wildlife throughout the buffer-zone surrounding the park. Dominique also uses elephants as an emblematic species to help inspire and improve the schooling experience of vulnerable girls in education programs such as the park’s Girls Clubs, working towards Sustainable Development Goals of gender equality and life on land in the communities around the park.

The WINGS Flag Carrier grant supports a critical component of Dominique’s assessment and monitoring of elephant populations in the Gorongosa National Park-Zambezi sector: the 99 active cameras distributed along the areas of high probability of elephants occurrence. Monitoring the recovery of the elephant population (particularly affected by the civil war), habitat use, and the distribution of elephants is crucial to inform management actions for the protection and conservation of a healthy elephant population under current and future threats such as habitat loss, HEC, illegal hunting and climate change. The monitoring data give valuable information to design and monitor actions for conflict mitigation, protection of elephants and elephants’ habitats.  Dominique is the narrator of the film Our Gorongosa: a Park for the People, which reflects a new model for conservation and community development in one of Africa’s iconic National Parks.