Miombo Ecoregion Vision Report - Biodiversity Foundation for Africa

1.3 The Ecoregion Conservation Planning Process
Miombo Ecoregion Report, page 8
The first step in the ecoregion conservation planning process is a reconnaissance to outline the
current state of biological and socio-economic knowledge for the area and to identify major gaps.
This stage involves a certain amount of data gathering and assessment. The reconnaissance also
seeks to identify major factors influencing environmental change and loss of biodiversity, to
identify key problems and opportunities for conservation interventions, and to provide a basis on
which to plan a more comprehensive biological and socio-economic assessment.
Both the reconnaissance and subsequent assessments provide the basis for developing a
biodiversity conservation vision. The vision should set out long-term goals for conservation of
the ecoregion's biodiversity, identify key sites, populations and ecological processes. It should
guide the development of the action plan and any strategic decisions as circumstances and
opportunities change. This is followed up by the development of a conservation action plan.
The action plan sets the 10 to 15 year goals for conservation of the ecoregion's biodiversity, and
identifies the actions needed to achieve those goals. It is a comprehensive blueprint for
conservation action, and identifies the first steps on the road to achieving the vision.
1.4 Miombo Ecoregion Vision Report
This report has built upon the reconnaissance process and vision building workshop to produce a
biodiversity vision. This vision is essentially a statement coupled with a series of biologically
important areas that have been identified for special attention. These areas have been identified
and mapped, and are described in this report. The expectation is that if we concentrate our
conservation efforts on them with full recognition of the goals of biodiversity conservation, we
should eventually realize our long-term biodiversity vision.
The Vision Report is a further step in the ecoregion planning process. It has built upon the
reconnaissance process but has advanced by producing a set of biologically important areas
across the ecoregion in a participatory process that involved biologists and socio-economic
experts. These areas represent overlaps in the occurrence and distribution of key taxa, species and
genera and in some cases, ecological processes. Boundaries of some of these areas are still
tentative, hence further refinement and detailed biological and associated socio-economic
assessments will be needed, along with identification of opportunities for conservation.
The major ecological processes identified during the reconnaissance and vision workshops have
also been described, as are the major socio-economic opportunities and threats. It is worth stating
that in this process an attempt was made to map out socio-economic processes, which will need
to be seriously considered in the construction of conservation action plans.
The report sets out to give an overview of the Caesalpinoid Woodland (Miombo) Ecoregion, and
to describe its boundaries, biological and socio-economic attributes. Particular attention has been
given to species diversity, regional endemism, global significance and to the ecological processes
that both underpin and unify the ecoregion. Suggestions for further necessary short-term
activities are also described.