Gorongosa

Declared in 1960, Gorongosa was devastated during Mozambique's long civil war (1977-1992), when both sides hunted the park's large mammals on a great scale to feed their troops and pay for weapons, wiping out more than 90% of its large herbivores and virtually all of its predators. Since 2008 an agreement between the Mozambican government and the American philanthropist Greg Carr has funded one of the largest ecological restoration — rewilding — projects in Africa, bringing back lions, wild dogs and other key species and returning the herbivore populations to something close to their pre-war levels. The process was documented in the National Geographic series Gorongosa Park: Rebirth of Paradise and is now treated worldwide as a reference case for restoring ecosystems wrecked by armed conflict.