Greg Carr meets with visitors and staff at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique
Greg Carr’s life is a model for making the world a better place. Start by listening.
The Idaho Falls native and entrepreneur first made his fortune developing and selling the early voice mail system with Boston Technology in 1986. After selling his company, and after a stint with Prodigy, he began a series of humanitarian activities tied to his own concern for human rights.
Today he is best known for restoring Gorongosa National Park and for helping to lift up the communities surrounding the park. He is succeeding at this dual mission because the lives of the humans and animals are equally important. Early on he recognized that the key to helping the communities was to focus on girls.
These young women, among the weakest members of the communities, were pushed into marriage and childbirth at very young lives are pushed away from education. At the same time he was building schools, health centers and investing in sustainable economic development. He sought to help them have a fair chance to prove themselves.
When he came to Mozambique a civil war was centered around the park that continued since the country was freed from Portugal. Carr helped negotiate a peace settlement between the rebels and the government. He found jobs opportunities for the former fighters.
Today visitors to Gorongosa watch lions on a kill, elephants in the thick tropical forest and colorful wild dogs taking dust baths and frolicking as others guard the den where a new set of pups grow. They see thousands of antelope, waterbuck, impala, nyala, kudu, bushbuck and sable, crocodiles, hippos and warthogs in the wild park that is the envy of the world. The menagerie of exotics birds, yellow-billed and saddled-billed storks, crested cranes, egrets, eagles, pelicans, hornbills, hammerkops and buzzards, is overwhelming.
They can also watch as the communities integrate their lives with the park and the animals who share the ecosystem where they live. This conservation strategy is exciting. We have seen similar examples in Idaho. Loggers, ranchers and even miners are working collaboratively to protect the values they share.
Carr’s investment in Mozambique has been more than $60 million already and he has committed another $100 million through 2043. Here in Idaho he co-founded the Museum of Idaho located in Idaho Falls,. He purchased the compound of the Aryan Nations, near Hayden Lake after it was seized by court order following a successful lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the white supremacist group. The land, donated to North Idaho College, is now a park. He was the lead donor to the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial here in Boise.
The Frank Church Institute will give Carr its distinguished public service award Tuesday, July 23 at the Boise Centre on the Grove.
In Idaho his strategy could be shared nationwide, among Republicans, Democrats and independents. We never needed it more.
In 2021 he was among a group of people who sought to bring Idahoans with common values, Americans with common values: Fairness, self-reliance, compassion and service among others. “Idaho Listens,” envisioned to create a future where in Carr’s words “every American is going to have the same opportunity to prove themselves.”
It’s still growing and Carr is still listening.
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