Feliciana Mmassy

Conservation of Threatened Old Pugu Forest Reserve with Community Involvement, Tanzania

Rehema Shomvi a village excutive officer from Mafizi village explaining various conservation activities done by her village.

Town/RegionCountryCategoriesDate
Pugu Forest Reserve Tanzania, United Republic ofAfrica, Forests14 Dec 2004

Pugu forest reserve has an area of 2179 hectares, like other coastal forests the area is an important conservation priority due to its high level of species endenism. Despite its fame that it is among the oldest forests in the world and one with many endemic species, Pugu forest is likely to perish due to a frightening level of damage caused by excessive removal for charcoal, unsustainable logging and firewood collection. Mining of kaolin is another destructive activities as the reserve encloses one of the world’s largest kaolin deposits. Pugu forest has been identified as global biodiversity hotspot therefore in need of conservation.

The project aims to provide protection for the threatened Pugu forest through conservation efforts and developing alternative resource bases for local community. The project will involve local communities in developing and implementing a set of viable income alternatives, which could minimize pressure on the existing Pugu forest reserve. The strategies to be involved will include environmental education for conservation awareness raising, establishment and support of community conservation committees, establishment of village tree nurseries, and agro forestry activities. Sustainable use of the forest such as recreation and ecotourism will be developed together with sustainable utilisation of woodland outside the forest reserve.

This conservation work will be carried out by a team of environmental conservationists from the Coast Women Environmental Conservation and Poverty Eradication Organization (COWEPO), an NGO that has been working for conservation of forest habitats in the Coast Region since 2001. The team intends to develop environmental education campaigns aiming to raise conservation awareness throughout the Coastal region and mobilisation of community based natural resources management.

These conservation strategies will ensure protection of the forest and continuous supply of tangible benefits to the community without affecting or reducing species richness distribution and the habitat ecosystem as a whole. Project's achievements will be communicated to policy makers at various levels in the country, the popular national mass media and to the Rufford Small Grant Foundation.

Project Update: April 2005

We are progressing well with the conservation activities; on Friday 4th March we had a workshop on forest conservation and sustainable management which was conducted for twelve villages involving Village Executive Officers, Ward Executive Officers and Ward Development Committees in the project area in Nzenga Ward in Kisarawe District. This workshop aimed to create awareness on environmental conservation, community reforestation and alternative income generating activities. Another workshop will be conducted this month in Chole Ward where also Ward Executive Officers, Ward Development Committees and Village Executive Officers from eight villages will attend.

After discussion with the village leaders, it was agreed that the destructive activities should stop and the forest boundary in these villages be resurveyed back to its position before encroachment took place. It was also agreed that all farmers bordering the forest should be asked to respect the forest boundaries and that gaps inside the forest should be planted with indigenous tree species during the village reforestation programmes, especially valuable timber species, e.g. Milicia excelsa and Newtonia buchananii which are heavily cut for timber

Public awareness through media for raising public awareness on high human disturbance for Pugu forest reserve is still going on through different media. On 5th and 7th March our project had a wide coverage and viewed through local TV, also through different local radios. Three articles in local and national newspaper were published about the current threats to the habitat and the need of sustainable conservation initiatives to reduce the threat.

Village Meetings

As a follow up of the workshop, the project team will have 12 village Council Meetings and village assembly meetings one meeting for each village for promoting in achieving the set goals for reforestation programmes. During the workshop these village leaders agreed that they will mobilize their fellow villagers so that each village can prepare a tree nursery of 26,000 seedlings, each village school to have a nursery of 10,000 seedlings and every family at least to plant 10 trees. Also in all these meetings the project conservation team will talk on alternative income generating activities, the environmental importance of Pugu forest reserve and allow them opportunities for discussing with the government on user rights for the Forest Reserve and possibility to establish village forest reserves in their village lands.


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