[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEN GUYTON: Gorongosa National Park was established in 1960.
It supported one of the densest wildlife populations in Africa.
But when the civil war broke out in 1977,
most of the big animals were killed
to feed the starving people.
And when the war ended, Gorongosa was in ruins.
Today, a massive restoration project
is underway to bring it back.
A major part of the project is identifying the species,
large and small, living in the park
today to ensure their protection and monitor their recovery.
Biologist Piotr Naskrecki is leading this effort.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: What we are trying to accomplish
is to begin compiling a comprehensive database
of all living elements of this park.
And this database will eventually
help us manage the park, help us restore sum of its parts,
and essentially understand how it all fits together.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEN GUYTON: Documenting the biodiversity of the park
means exploring each habitat.
Piotr's first study site is one of the remotest
and least known areas of the park, the Cheringoma Plateau.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: The Cheringoma Plateau
is completely unexplored limestone gorge,
which is filled almost to the rim
with a beautiful old growth forest.
It's a potentially unbelievably rich area.
JEN GUYTON: Located in the east of the park,
these gorges are part of Africa's Great Rift Valley.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Piotr has assembled a team of leading experts
from all over the world for a month-long expedition
to quantify the biodiversity of these gorges.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Each scientist is focusing on species
from their own area of expertise.
SPEAKER 1: Oh, there is a juvenile.
SPEAKER 2: Tree frogs.
It's a new species.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEN GUYTON: We must catch and identify as many species
as we can using a variety of methods.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Baiting traps for small mammals.
SPEAKER 3: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
JEN GUYTON: Digging pitfall traps for lizards.
Using dung to lure in beetles.
Climbing into the tree canopy for rare insects and plants.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: It's a female, so she's feeding.
JEN GUYTON: Searching behind bark for ants.
White sheet and a light to attract flying insects.
And for me, I specialize in small mammals, including bats.
So we're setting up a mist net over here just
across this stream.
It's going to be a great place for bats
because they love flying along water.
There are a lot of insects here, of course.
All right, it looks good.
Now I've got to wait till sundown when the bats come out.
Finding species is one part of our job.
The second part is figuring out how they're all connected.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: This entire ecosystem
is different from the outside world
because it doesn't have plants.
So any energy that's present in the cave has to be brought in,
and it's brought in with bats.
They feed outside.
They come in, they poop on the ground.
And that bat guano kind of is the engine
of this entire ecosystem.
And you have crickets that feed directly on the guano.
Those animals, in turn, are eaten by whip scorpions,
by frogs.
And those, in turn, are being eaten by civets, and mongooses,
and so on.
[BAT CHIRPING]
JEN GUYTON: So we have five, maybe six bats in the net.
Trying to get them all out before
they chew their way through.
Wow!
Oh my god, this is great!
This guy's bright yellow.
Looks like he's even something different than the first one.
At least-- at least four species.
Back at camp, I bring my night's catch
to Piotr to help identify the species.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: So set it to about--
start with 30 and then go up, and see if you can hear her.
JEN GUYTON: They're actually able to hum and emit
echolocation through their nose leaf
and receive it back into their ears and their face
and get an image of what it is that's in front of them.
We can't hear bats' echolocation calls.
The frequency is way too high.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: I am using a special device called
the ultrasound recorder, which sort of translates
these high frequencies for me so that I can actually
perceive them.
So if he starts talking now--
JEN GUYTON: That's great.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: Oh!
[CHIRPING]
That's him.
God, it's the purest call I have ever heard.
Unbelievable.
One of the reasons why people are
interested in echolocation of bats
because it's a great identification tool.
Many of these bats have species-specific calls.
So if we find something that's not recognizable,
that's a very good indication that it might
be a species new to science.
OK, I think we got it.
JEN GUYTON: Identifying a large number of bat species
in Gorongosa is a good sign.
Bats are known as indicator species, which
means they give us clues about the health
of the entire habitat.
Bats are extremely sensitive to changes
in their environment, like water quality, agriculture,
or deforestation.
So the more bat species, the healthier the environment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When the collecting of species is complete,
we need to process, identify, and catalog our finds.
A year later, we have the results
from the Cheringoma Plateau survey.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: Before we started,
we knew of 300 total of all the species of animals and plants
that live in Gorongosa.
Now we are at 2,820 species of animals and plants.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEN GUYTON: Over the next few years,
Piotr will conduct similar surveys
in other areas of the park.
PIOTR NASKRECKI: I believe that in the end,
the park has somewhere between 50,000,
75,000, maybe even 100,000 species of animals and plants.
So just simply putting a name on a species-- on a frog,
on a bird, or on a plant--
is a very, very powerful argument
towards its preservation.
We are sort of assigning it a legal status
so it becomes recognized as existing.
JEN GUYTON: Quantifying Gorongosa's biodiversity
will also help track the park's continued recovery in the face
of massive challenges.
Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world,
with a population set to quadruple in the next 100
years.
As the population grows, pressures on natural resources
will surely increase.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
These baseline surveys are an extremely powerful tool
for being able to monitor changes and identify threats
before it's too late.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PIOTR NASKRECKI: I just noticed what
I consider the holy grail of praying mantis.
This one insect made this whole trip worthwhile for me.
Ah, yes!
Awesome.
It's a cool little creature, on an orchid
that's new to Mozambique.