Eastern Africa Coastal Forest Programme: Regional Workshop ...

data indicate that Mozambique contains 55 coastal forest sites, covering at least 4770
sq km of forested land. This therefore makes Mozambique the country with the
largest area of the habitat remaining along the eastern African coast. Many of the
remaining forests are found in regions with extremely low population densities and
hence the rates of threat from agricultural conversion are lower than elsewhere. In
comparison, there are many rumours of timber operations in northern Mozambique
that might be removing some of the larger specimen trees from these forests.
Table 1 : Number and area (km 2 ) of coastal forests in eastern African countries in
1992 and 2002
Somalia Kenya Tanzania Mozambique
Attribute 1992 2002 1992 2002 1992 2002 1992 2002
Number 2 ? 99 103 66 179 18 55
of
Forests
Area of
Forests
2 ? 660 787 700 692+ 1790 4778
Biological Data.
The draft list of endemic plants and animals available at the workshop was slightly
updated in terms of endemic vertebrate animals (see Annex K). Since the first
compilation of data on the endemic species (from the mid 1990s) two new species of
vertebrate have been described, the first being the Rondo Galago (Galagoides
rondoensis) and the second a species of amphibian (Stephopaedes usambarensis).
Another species of Galago awaits description from the lowlands of Kenya and
northern Tanzania (A. Perkin, in lit.).
These new data indicate that the coastal forests contain at least 554 species of strictly
endemic plants, 53 endemic vertebrates, and at least hundreds (probably many
thousands) of endemic invertebrates. The surrounding non-forested vegetation of the
coastal strip of eastern Africa containing at least 812 strictly endemic plants and 47
endemic vertebrates (Table 2).
Table 2: Number of endemic species in the coastal forests and non-forested
vegetation of the coastal strip of eastern Africa
Coastal Forest Ecoregional Non-forest Ecoregional
Endemics
Endemics
Taxon Groups 1992 2002 1992 2002
Plants 554 554+ 812 812+
Birds 9 9 6 6
Mammals 10 12 0 0
Reptiles 27 27 40 40
Amphibians 4 5 1 1
Molluscs 86 86+ 120 120+
Butterflies 75 75+ ? ?
TOTAL 765 767+ 979 979+
Mapping the forest patches
Eastern Africa Coastal Forests - 16 - Workshop Report, Nairobi February 4-7 2002