Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

Illegal fishing in Lake Urema

Nov 12, 2009 - Gorongosa National Park

Gorongosa National Park (GNP) recently apprehended three canoes, two fishing nets 300 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, and more than 300 kg of fish from Lake Urema. 

The fishermen offenders, of an unspecified number, were noticed at a distance by GNP scouts, that at the time were accompanying a team of Scientific Services that was going to carry out work in that zone.  The fishermen escaped from the spot, abandoning the product and the fishing equipment. 

They were men of the community of Mueredzi, county of the district of Muanza, illegally established in the interior of GNP during the armed conflict that ended in 1992.

A few members of the above mentioned community practice illegal and predatory fishing in the Lake for commercial ends.

In addition to creating an ecological imbalance of the ecosystems of the Urema, the placement of that village inside the limits of the area of conservation obstructs the free circulation of elephants towards the North of the Park.  This fact obliges the paquidermes to open new routes and to create man/animal conflict characterized by human deaths and destruction of agricultural properties in some settlements of the zones in the vicinity of GNP. 

Furtive fishing on a large scale can lead to the exhaustion of the marine resources, putting in cause the survival of diverse species of resident aquatic and migratory birds that come to the Park during the summer fleeing the intense coldness in the winter of the Northern Hemisphere, and reptiles that feed basically on fish from the natural spring. 

There are numerous flocks of pelicans, grouses, storks, African marine ravens, herons, snake grebes, African spoonbills, sacred ibises and more, that inhabit the humid zones and execute their fishing activity in the Lake, which also receives, presumably, the greatest number of large size Nile Crocodiles on the Planet. 

The administration of GNP has worked for a while on this part for the settlement of the community of Mueredzi with around 70 families outside of the lawful and official limits of GNP, but the population and the leadership of this community do not cooperate for the viability of the above-mentioned plan. 

Last year they also rendered useless the implementation of a program of the Department of the Community Relations that aimed at regulating the quantity of fish per family destined for domestic consumption to guarantee the ecological equilibrium of the resources of Lake Urema, calculated on the basis of international standards of the World Health Organization. 

Using rowboats, some people of Mueredzi continue to practice predatory fishing with nets for large schools of tilapia and catfish.  After the catch is smoked it is transported in trucks and sold in informal markets of Beira and in the North of the Country, especially in the province of Nampula.

Pictures:  Department of Conservation and Carlitos Sunza
Text:  Carlitos Sunza (Department of Communications/GNP)