Eastern Africa Coastal Forest Programme: Regional Workshop ...

• Identifying and developing alternatives sources of forest based raw material.
• Securing sustainable sources of funding to support coastal forest conservation
activities at various levels
• Completing and consolidating the coastal forest information database for use in
conservation and management
• Maintaining the public and policymaker's interest and awareness of forest
conservation issues.
7. MAPPING
Background
The coastal forests of eastern Africa are recognised as an area of global importance
for their concentration of narrowly endemic plants and animals (Statterfield et al.,
1998; Olson and Dinerstein 1998; Mittermeier et al., 1998). Summary statistics on the
remaining area of forest (Table 1) are contrasted with the biological value of the
forests (Table 2), showing that many narrowly endemic species are packed into a tiny
and heavily fragmented forest resource.
Analysis of the number of species confined to forests and those confined to other
vegetation types within the coastal forest ecoregions indicates that the forest
vegetation contains most of the endemics, but that significant numbers of endemic
species are also found in other vegetation types along the coast (Table 2).
The most important region of the coastal forests, in terms of narrowly endemic
species, extends from northern Kenya south through Tanzania to Lindi. Available
information suggests that the region of southernmost Tanzania and through
Mozambique is of lower importance, but this might be due to the lack of biological
investigation in this remote and difficult to access area. References used in the
process of updating information on existing map, species list, etc are listed in Annex
H.
Definition of Eastern African Coastal Forests
The workshop reviewed a recent definition of the coastal forests of eastern Africa
(Burgess and Clarke 2000; Annex I). This definition was accepted as a working
model, although some of the vegetation types in Mozambique cannot easily be
accommodated in this definition and it was pointed out that the drier mangrove
habitats which grade into terrestrial forest habitats also do not fit within this
definition. The definition is also quite narrow and a number of coastal vegetation
communities fall outside and hence were not adequately considered during this
workshop. However as the majority of the rare and endemic species are found in the
closed canopy forest vegetation types covered by this definition, then the focus on
this habitat type was regarded as appropriate for the purposes of this workshop. At
later stages when vegetation maps are available it will be important to consider the
full range of vegetation types along the coast and to assess the overall conservation
needs systematically.
Eastern Africa Coastal Forests - 14 - Workshop Report, Nairobi February 4-7 2002