eastern arc mountains forests of tanzania - Campaign for the ...

Eastern Arc Mountains Forests of Tanzania
Other forest management regimes
Other forest management regimes amount to a relatively small amount of the total forest (Figure 1). However,
they fulfil an important ‘buffer’ role, meeting to a significant extent the livelihood needs of local communities and,
thereby, helping to reduce pressures on the national forest reserves and national park. They are described briefly
below.
District. District authorities, under the Prime Ministers Office for Regional and Local Government, also own
forests within reserves across the Eastern Arc Mountains. In total there are 13,814 ha of Local Authority Forest
Reserves in the Eastern Arc Mountains region. Typically, these are small reserves with few biological values.
Village. Several hundred villages are distributed across the Eastern Arc Mountains. In many of these villages
there are small patches of forest. Village Land Forest Reserves cover 298,897 ha of forest habitat. Other areas
of forest are either Sacred Forest areas, or uncultivated forest land.
Private. There are areas of forest on private lands throughout the Eastern Arc Mountains, in particular on tea
estates in the East and West Usambara and the Udzungwa Mountains. These forest areas are not considered
this serial nomination, with one exception (Amani Nature Reserve), because of management constraints.
The distribution of the nationally designated protected areas is shown in Figure 2. Outside of this network of
protected areas in the Eastern Arc Mountains, most forest has been cleared except in small village burial and
other sacred sites, a number of district and village Forest Reserves and private estates (as considered above),
and inaccessible areas. A list of protected forest lands within the Eastern Arc Mountains is provided in Annex 3.
IDENTIFICATION OF CORE AREAS TO INCLUDE IN THE SERIAL PROPERTY
As intimated in the introductory section explaining the nomination process, comprehensive databases of plant
and animal species endemic to the eastern Arc Mountains were used to identify the most important of the 13
mountain blocks and the most outstanding protected areas within them for inclusion within this serial nomination.
This and other information, concerning site integrity and state of protection and management, was assessed in
relation to OUV (Outstanding University Value) criteria, to define the World Heritage property.
Selection of Mountain Blocks
The results of an analysis of plant and vertebrate data concerning the known distribution species endemic to the
Eastern Arc Mountains are shown in Figures 3 and 4. The 13 mountain blocks are ranked according to the
number of species confined to a single mountain block (block endemic).
Taken together, the results of the analyses are largely complementary and show that the most important
mountain blocks for endemic plants and vertebrates in Tanzania are Uluguru, Udzungwa, East and West
Usambara, and Nguru. Biodiversity within each of these mountain blocks is protected to some extent within one
or more nature reserves (a number of which are in the process of being notified during 2010) and, in the case of
the Udzungwa Mountains, a national park. None of the other mountain blocks currently has any natures reserves
(or national parks), except for South Pare where Chome is due to be notified as a Nature Reserve in 2010.
This assessment is further supported by the results of an analysis of endemic and near endemic 1 threatened 2
vertebrates found in the different mountain blocks (Figure 5). Blocks with the highest numbers of threatened
species are Udzungwa, Uluguru, East Usambara, Nguru, West Usambara and Rubeho.
1 Near-endemic is defined as also occurring within one other African ecoregion (Burgess et al., 2007).
2 The term threatened is used in the case of species classified as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable in the
IUCN Red List (2009).
Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism 25