Ben Madilynn
The number of deaths due to attacks by wild animals in Mozambique almost tripled last year, to 159, according to a report by the country’s National Statistics Institute (INE) to which Lusa had access on Monday.
In its 2023 Basic Environmental Indicators report, INE details that the number of deaths due to human-wildlife conflict was 58 in the previous year and 56 in 2021, but 97 in 2020 and 42 in 2019.
More than half of the fatalities from these attacks last year were concentrated in Tete province (70), followed by Zambezia (31), according to the INE data, which also states that only Sofala and Nampula provinces did not register any deaths.
Tete province alone has seen 137 deaths due to human-wildlife conflict since 2019, according to INE records.
The destruction of crops by wild animals has also been an issue in several provinces.
“With regard to crop areas destroyed by wildlife, 1,490 hectares were destroyed in 2023, with Gaza province seeing the most destruction (68.3 per cent), followed by Tete with 16.3 per cent,” the document reads.
The report adds that the number of people injured in these attacks also continues to grow, affecting 114 people in 2023, compared to 70 the previous year, 51 in 2021, 66 in 2020 and 59 in 2019.
Citing the latest available data, the INE report recalls that in 2018 Mozambique had an estimated population of 9,114 elephants and 64,800 buffalo, among dozens of large species.
According to the same INE report, in 2023 a total of 205,375 people are estimated to live inside Mozambique’s protected areas, in 162 communities, plus 501,737 in another 504 communities in the buffer zones around these parks and reserves.
According to previous data from the National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC), rampaging wild animals destroyed a total of 955 hectares of agricultural crops, such as maize and cassava, between 2019 and 2023.
Source: Lusa
