Stephanie Hanes

March, 2009 – GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, Mozambique — For years, the rangers at this long-struggling national park knew about Tato Alexandre.  They knew how the slim farmer crossed the muddy Pungue River into their protected area, and how he looped wires around trees to make snare traps for warthogs, antelopes and buffalo. They knew that he carried the carcasses back to his village, and that bush meat buyers from Beira – Mozambique’s second largest city – came to his bamboo and thatch homestead to pay 75 meticais, about $3, per kilo. But the laws governing environmental crimes in Mozambique are weak. To make any case against Tato, the park rangers needed to catch him in the act.  And he was far too crafty for that.  “Yes,” Tato recalls cheerfully. “I was a poacher grande.” So, in 2004, when Tato showed up at the park headquarters looking for a job, the rangers were quick to move his name from number 99 on the waiting list up to third. “They were very surprised,” he says. “But they wanted me on