Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya ...

Ranking of Threats in TanzaniaBecause of the different ways in which threats have been identified and analyzed in differentportions of the hotspot, it is difficult to include all the data in an overall ranking of threats in thehotspot. The most compatible datasets come from site-by-site analyses of threats for 114 sites inthe Tanzanian Coastal Forests (WWF-EARPO 2002) and for 136 sites in the Tanzanian EasternArc Mountains (data from Neil Burgess). Figure 5 summarizes this data in ranked form for thetop 10 threats common to both datasets.The top 10 overall threats (in ranked order) are agriculture and encroachment, fire, timberextraction, polewood cutting, population growth, charcoal production, grazing, hunting, miningand roads. Population growth was included as a threat in both datasets, although it may be betterconsidered as an ultimate factor, driving the other proximate threats. Two additional threats wereidentified only for the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests (corruption and medicinal plants) andanother seven only for the Coastal Forests (settlement, urbanisation, fuelwood, carving wood,salt, tourism and open access). Of these additional threats, three (carving wood, salt and tourism)may be genuinely restricted to the coastal forests. The apparent restriction of the other additionalthreats to either the Coastal Forests or the Eastern Arc Mountains is almost certainly an artefactof the different analyses used. For example, corruption and fuelwood extraction are a problem inboth ecoregions.Despite these problems and the exclusion of the Kenyan data, Figure 5 provides a reasonablepicture of the relative importance of the overall threats in the hotspot.Figure 5. Ranking of threats in the Eastern Arc Mountains (136 forests) and Coastal Forests (108forests)20Threat Score181614121086420E. Arc ForestsCoastal ForestsMiningRoadsHuntingGrazingCharcoalPopulationPolewoodTimberFireAgr / EncThreat44