Top photo: CBS correspondent Scott Pelley (center, first row) joins a local Girls Club for a safari drive.
Sunday December 4 at 7 pm (EST); 6 p.m. (MST) CBS News “60 Minutes” will broadcast a segment about Gorongosa National Park.
Correspondent Scott Pelley first visited Gorongosa 14 years ago, and returned this past August to check on progress of the wildlife restoration and the human development initiatives in the communities near the Park.
On this second trip, Pelley witnessed the reintroduction of hyenas, visited a pangolin rescue center, participated in placing a radio collar on a lion, and travelled the Park roads extensively to witness the abundance of new wildlife in the restored ecosystem.
Over the last 18 years, former internet pioneer Greg Carr joined the Government of Mozambique and multiple national donors, including the USA, in this project which combines support for local families with restoration and protection of Gorongosa’s globally significant biodiversity.
Gorongosa Park and the local people suffered during a generation of conflict, from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. The Gorongosa Project is now the largest employer in central Mozambique. National Geographic refers to Gorongosa as one of Africa’s most successful wildlife restorations.
Scott Pelley visits with Gorongosa Restoration President Greg Carr (left) and Gorongosa Tour Guide Gabriela Curtiz (right).
In the local communities, Gorongosa enhances the education of 40,000 children in 89 schools, helps the Mozambican Ministry of Health to provide healthcare to more than 100,000 people per year, and provides agricultural extension services to thousands of farm families.
Thirty universities are affiliated with Gorongosa’s Science Department. The Park offers a two-year Master’s in Conservation Biology, the only program of its kind in Mozambique. Gorongosa is dedicated to training the next generation of Mozambican scientists.
“Almost all (98%) of our employees are Mozambican and this is a Mozambican success story,” said Greg Carr, president, Gorongosa Restoration Project.
60 Minutes is a 55 year-old American television news magazine that first aired in 1968. The New York Times refers to it as “one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television.”
Scott Pelley joins the Gorongosa veterinarians for a wildlife check-up and helps place a tracking collar on a lion.
Amazing experience in Gorongosa at the same time 60 minutes team was there.
Thank you Gregg Carr and everyone at Gorongosa who made our visit so special.
Congratulations and continued success in all your endeavors.
Hi. Will it be possible for people in Europe without CBS to watch the program from Gorongoza?
We’re working on it. CBS tells us it will be available through their website. Whether or not Europe will grant you access to the US infrastructure is another matter. If it doesn’t work, please let us know and we’ll reach out to CBS and see what we can do. Thank you for your interest!
So looking forward to tonight’s presentation!
Thank you Greg Carr for all that have done for conservation, the IUCN and the Mozambican
people–and to 60 Minutes for showing the world again the impact a single person can have with the right resources, intelligence, and will.
Dear Greg, Vasco, and the whole team at Gorongosa! We have “talked” digitally before, so the enthusiasm of people like me for your work at the park should come as no surprise. I visited Gorongosa in 1963, when Mozambique was still under the control of the dictators in Lisbon (and just before I was arrested by PIDE – the Portuguese political police – for demonstrating too much impetuosity and eagerness for the kind of freedoms all of you have brought about at the park.) What a magnificent difference now! And what a sterling example of the good to be wrought by the will of the human spirit under sincere and earnest guidance. Congratulations to you all. If I were to be granted a dying wish, it would be to revisit Gorongosa as it is now, 60 years on!