Sep 15, 2026 |
The number of families farming inside fenced communities in Mozambique rose from 993 in July to 1,726 in August.
According to the Mozambique Wildlife Alliance, eight new communities were fenced in a single month, six in Massingir, one in Marromeu and another in Magoé, the largest expansion since the Protected Farming Communities programme began.
The model rests on fencing off areas of machambas to reduce encounters between farmers and wild animals. The fences remain in the hands of the communities, which organise themselves, receive training and take on the maintenance and monitoring of the systems, while the organisation funds the construction and follows up on how it works.
Also according to the Mozambique Wildlife Alliance, the community of Bingo, damaged by flooding earlier this year, has been rebuilt in full and the 269 families living there once again have a working fence. The network has also reached three new landscapes, Zinave National Park, Coutada 11, in Marromeu, and Macossa, in Manica province.
The figures released by the organisation on its monitoring platform point to 26 fenced communities, 461 hectares protected and 1,726 farming families covered, spread across six different landscapes. The commitment made is to reach 100 protected communities, with 50 applications under assessment, two approved and five rejected, according to the same source.
The organisation credited the result to its donors, to the farmers, to the field teams and to the partners involved in the programme.
The network is widening in a country where conflict between people and wildlife continues to claim lives. ANAC has already recorded more than 160 cases of loss of human life linked to these conflicts, a problem felt particularly in Zambezi valley districts such as Mágoè, where 65 cases of conflict were reported, according to AIM. AIM.
The programme's arrival at Zinave National Park lands in a territory that has been the subject of a sustained species reintroduction effort, run by ANAC with the Peace Parks Foundation, and where the return of large mammals makes coexistence with neighbouring communities an increasingly sensitive question.
Photo: MWA
