Neil D. Burgess, Paul Harrison, Peter Sumbi, James Laizer, Adam ...

METT scores (total out of 100)
MANAGEMENT ISSUES: TANZANIA’S COASTAL FORESTS 2011
4.7 Management Effectiveness
The effectiveness of reserve management in the coastal Districts of mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar
island has been assessed through the completion of 146 Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool
forms in 2011. This work covers all coastal districts, but with a focus on the main implementation
landscapes in Rufiji, Kilwa and Lindi, and all reserves on Unguja and Pemba.
Analysis of these data shows that the most effective reserve management approaches (according to
the scores derived from the tool) are National Parks and Village Land Forest Reserves. No Nature
Reserves were assessed using the tool as there are none in the mainland coastal forests and one in
Pemba that is recently established.
The National and Local Authority Forest Reserves assessed all have lower scores than the National
Parks or Village Land Forest Reserves, suggesting they have lower effectiveness in terms of their
ability to conserve the habitat or species that are found within their boundaries. This is broadly
confirmed by the high levels of logging, charcoal burning, pole cutting and bushmeat hunting that
occurs in many of these reserves. Some of this is legally licensed by the districts (and hence is a
source of income), but a lot is illegal and only providing benefits to a few traders and those
controlling the trade, often based in Dar es Salaam. The lack of effective management makes it hard
for these illegal practices to be controlled.
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
National Park
(n=2)
Nature Reserve
(n=1)
Game
Reserve(n=1)
Forest Reserve
(n=76)
Local Authority
Forest Reserve
(n=8)
Village Land
Forest Reserve
(n=45)
Proposed
reserves (n=12)
Reserve categories
Figure 22: Mean management effectiveness scores across different reserve management regimes
in coastal Tanzania (n=146 sites with data)
Average scores for the reserves within the focal intervention landscapes are 30.9 in Lindi, 39.46 in
Matumbi, 51.3 in Kilwa, 51 on Zanzibar – against a score of 48.5 for the rest of the coastal districts
that are not focal areas of the project. These average scores imply that the weakest managed
reserves are in Lindi district, but that all the reserves are not very effectively managed. Reserves
often lack clearly marked boundaries, have no management plan, lack staff, and do not have
effective agreements with surrounding local communities.
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