AAfter huddling in a damp, cool cave, Raúl da Silva Armando Chomela is waiting for his eyes to adjust. Wearing latex gloves, a helmet fitted with a headlamp, and a mask to protect his lungs from fine particles and bacteria, the molecular biologist from the Mozambican port city of Beira peers into the shadows for signs of bats.
He spent two years in these claustrophobic environments studying winged mammals and their excrement. “Guano is more than just bat droppings,” he says. “If I had to describe it in one word, I would say ‘ecosystem’.”
Guano, developed over time from the droppings of birds and bats, is a rich, powerful, organic substance that is home to beetles, frogs and cave-dwelling salamanders.
Caves are their own little worlds. Everything smells, looks and feels different, with bacteria and viruses that have evolved to survive in harsh conditions without sunlight.
This is just one of more than 30 caves in and around Gorongosa, a 1,500 square kilometer national park in central Mozambique, one of the most biodiverse areas in Africa.
The work Chomela does is not for the faint of heart. He always squeezes himself into small, dark places or lowers a pole or rope in an unknown place with strange inhabitants. Attachment is always a possibility.
This underground, honeycombed network covers 183 sq km, according to the park’s science department. Although there is no information about how many of the more than 100 species of bats found in Gorongosa live here, Tombo Aphale 5 – one of the most studied caves, through archeology – there are more than 10,000 bats, says Chomela.
Gorongosa was founded in 1960 by the Portuguese colonial government. But biodiversity and conservation were not a priority for the Marxist-leaning Frelimo party (Independence of Mozambique), which came to power in 1975 after a ten-year war for independence.
Just two years later, the park became a battleground in a bloody civil war started by Renamo guerrillas (The Mozambican National Resistance), created by Ian Smith’s white minority government in Rhodesia and later supported by apartheid South Africa.
The Renamo terrorists found shelter and fuel in the bush, hunting and eating whatever they could find: elephants, buffaloes, waterbucks, hippos, even rats stuffed in bags in the south. By the time the war ended more than 15 years later, 95% of the wildlife had been wiped out – including some 5,500 of the region’s hippos – and many feared the animals would never recover.
The great suffering that happened to the local people, the survivors of the long war who were forced to recruit and suffered human rights abuses on both sides, is still visible to the people of the present generations.
Against such challenges, decades of careful environmental efforts – often led by international organizations but increasingly involving researchers and Mozambican communities – have produced one of the most satisfying stories of successful conservation in Africa.
Among them is the Paleo-Primate Project (PPP), a collaboration launched in 2018 between the University of Oxford and the Gorongosa national park led by Susana Carvalho, a primatologist and paleoanthropologist.
The project brings together international and local researchers and students in archaeology, ecology and geology. “[Gorongosa Restoration Project] it is the largest employer in the region and an important factor for economic stability,” Carvalho says.
Chomela started his journey in Gorongosa as a researcher in the diversity laboratory in 2022 before joining PPP in 2025. His interests range from using environmental DNA to reconstruct the ancient history of the garden to metabarcoding – a modern molecular method to determine the species of DNA samples of monkeys and bats. A first-year doctoral student at the University of Porto in Portugal, his research is attached to the EO Wilson Laboratory in Chitengo, in the heart of Gorongosa, where he leads the genetics laboratory.
Chomela, 28, is at the forefront of several interesting fields surrounding the impact of economic activity and climate change on the Gorongosa region, including the role of bats.
“We know that bats eat insects – including mosquitoes that cause malaria – and pests, which protect crops,” Chomela says. That’s why we’re focusing on better understanding what the bats’ diet is, and the rate at which guano is produced.”
Many locals – young men in particular – know these caves like the back of their hands, having grown up playing in them before harvesting guano for a living. João Lorenço Daoce, 29, became the leader of the community of Inhaminga, a town near the caves, after the death of his father last year and serves as a cave guide for PPP members. “He knows the easiest, safest way to get to most of the caves,” Chomela says.
The two men formed a strong relationship and Daoce began sharing his new ideas about bats and their benefits with farmers and his neighbors.
The people of Mozambique are among the poorest in the world. The country in southern Africa is placed on the UN’s list of human development, although it is rich in diamonds, rubies, graphite, gas and other natural resources. Harvesting guano is one of the few ways to earn money in rural areas.
Chomela estimates that, on average, harvesters make 200 meticais (£2.33) for every 50kg of guano – rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – that is collected and sold as agricultural fertiliser, mainly for sorghum, beans and maize. “The residents know that guano is a very good fertilizer, and they put it inside them machambas [farming plots],” Chomela says.
But without a measured collection system, guano can quickly disappear, destroying cave biodiversity and community income.
“When they see guano, they see money, but guano is what ensures stable environmental conditions in caves, from 100% humidity or 50C. [122F] The heat that some bats need to live,” says Chomela. The harvesters will then move on to the next cave.
“We’re looking for a scientific basis to convince the public, and the public at large, of a sustainable way to harvest guano using less destructive methods without disturbing the bats too much,” he says.
To create a metabarcode, Chomela captures a bat and tags it before storing it in a sterile bag until it urinates. These samples provide a lot of information: what the bat eats, sex ratios and the presence of parasites and parasites.
He hopes that the results of this bat guano DNA research, which he is working on with two other researchers, will help people living in these remote areas to become bat protectors themselves. “For example, if we show that bats eat agricultural pests, [farmers] it will be bat friendly,” he says.
Although humans have long lived in close proximity to bats, understanding of their role in the ecosystem is limited. Traditional beliefs often regard them as bad omens or wrongly blame them for diseases. “There are those who believe that if bats come to your house, someone will die,” said Chomela. “It is important to show that this is not the case.
By presenting evidence supported by science to members of the community, he hopes to convince the local people – the custodians of these caves – of the importance of living together.
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