Eastern Africa Coastal Forest Programme: Regional Workshop ...

• Some farmers/villagers have started utilising forest produce from their woodlot
hence reducing pressure on adjacent forest reserves.
• Level awareness of the communities has increased significantly, as exemplified by
number of people actively involved in tree planting scheme and willingness to set
aside some woodlands to be designated as village forest reserves.
• Over 50,000Ha of coastal forests have been upgraded from free access forests to
some form of protection status (national, local authority and village forest
reserves) and,
• Zaraninge forest (17,869Ha), the largest block of the remaining patches of coastal
forests was gazetted in 2000 as a local authority forest reserve etc.
Priority Coastal Forest Sites in Tanzania as Part of the EACFP
Based on Frontier surveys (1995) and Burgess (2000), we can roughly prioritise forest
sites based on their Biodiversity potential and possibly the level of threats in the areas.
Forest that are noticeably rich in species for their size and forests with relatively high
endemism Pugu, Rondo Plateau, Litipo, Matumbi hills, Kichi Hills, Zaraninge,
Pangani falls, Litipo, Pindiro and Mlola. More surveys and analysis are required to
obtain enough data before priority setting. This could be part of the EACFP activities
Lessons Learned and Recommended Next Steps with EACFP
• The current new national Forest Policy (1998) which advocates on involvement of
all key stakeholders in managing forest resources, is a good opportunity for
initiating a broader coastal forest programme involving a wide range of
stakeholders.
• Following tangible success of existing national’s site level projects as scaled up
regional programme is now necessary as it allows for a holistic approach to
tackling root causes and ensure upgraded capacity for impact on conservation.
• Regulation of timber trade in the region needs emphasis in the proposed
programme borrowing some experiences by the people and plant programme in
Kenya, where wood caring project had much positive impact.
• The EACP should come up with longer proposed time frame (10-15 years) to
provide for more capacity building potential and involvement of partners.
• Assess alternative resource and income generating activities for human livelihood
and marketing options.
• The EACP should mainly be playing a facilitation role to the local partners and
very mini9mum implementation role at field level to strengthen local programme
ownership, responsibility, knowledge base and consequently sustainability of
programme initiatives.
• Considering scattered national coastal forest initiatives by different players there
is a need to establish national coastal forests network/partnership and EACF
initiatives co-ordinated in a regional scale.
• EACFP needs to develop standardised methodology for surveys and associated
database and mapping and GIS facilities these will enhance completion of status
report of Eastern African Coastal Forests
Eastern Africa Coastal Forests - 40 - Workshop Report, Nairobi February 4-7 2002