Miombo Ecoregion Vision Report - Biodiversity Foundation for Africa

PREFACE
The Miombo Ecoregion Vision Report was commissioned in 2001 by the Southern Africa
Regional Programme Office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF SARPO). It
represented the culmination of an ecoregion reconnaissance process led by Bruce Byers (see
Byers 2001a, 2001b), followed by an ecoregion-scale mapping process of taxa and areas of
interest or importance for various ecological and bio-physical parameters. The report was then
used as a basis for more detailed discussions during a series of national workshops held across
the region in the early part of 2002. The main purpose of the reconnaissance and visioning
process was to initially outline the bio-physical extent and properties of the so-called Miombo
Ecoregion (in practice, a collection of smaller previously described ecoregions), to identify
the main areas of potential conservation interest and to identify appropriate activities and
areas for conservation action.
The outline and some features of the Miombo Ecoregion (later termed the Miombo–
Mopane Ecoregion by Conservation International, or the Miombo–Mopane Woodlands and
Grasslands) are often mentioned (e.g. Burgess et al. 2004). However, apart from two booklets
(WWF SARPO 2001, 2003), few details or justifications are publically available, although a
modified outline can be found in Frost, Timberlake & Chidumayo (2002).
Over the years numerous requests have been made to use and refer to the original
document and maps, which had only very restricted distribution. Now, 10 years after the
original draft Vision Report was produced, we are making the report more widely available as
a Biodiversity Foundation for Africa (BFA) publication. Only minor corrections or additions
have been made to the original document, and maps from other publications have been added
in.
Another BFA Publication (No. 21, Timberlake et al. 2011) presents a series of maps
showing the areas of biological importance, an output from a BFA consultancy.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the support of WWF SARPO in Harare, particularly Fortune
Shonhiwa, Programme Office for the Miombo Ecoregion visioning process. The maps were
mostly produced by WWF's GIS Unit.