Francesco Rovero

Ranger and Community-Based Monitoring of Biodiversity in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania

Disturbance monitoring.

The Udzungwa Mountains host exceptional levels of biodiversity. Whilst part of the mountains is protected by the Udzungwa Mountains National Park (UMNP), the area lacks an effective biodiversity monitoring programme. Yet, monitoring and assessment of biodiversity, identification of threats and prioritisation of sites are key elements of effective protected area management. Without quantitative measures on biodiversity status and threats, both park management and community conservation initiatives cannot be evaluated objectively. Because of the importance of local empowerment and long-term implementation of any monitoring effort, the involvement of the local community can greatly enhance the long-term sustainability of monitoring efforts.

This project aims to contribute to ecosystem protection in the UMNP by establishing a biodiversity monitoring programme that effectively involves rangers and the local communities. The applicant helped UMNP establish the Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Centre (UEMC) in 2006, a facility dedicated to strengthening ecological monitoring capacity. The UEMC and the long-term collaboration established with the park authorities will insure project success and sustainability. Rangers and village scouts will be trained on data collection and the first 6 months of data collection will be jointly conducted with the Project Team and carefully evaluated.

To be effective, monitoring has to be simple, cheap and replicable. The monitoring activities chosen will be in line with these requirements, and altogether are designed to provide a comprehensive set of data on the status of the biodiversity (1. large mammals, 2. forest flagship species, 3. human impact):

1) Transect routes, 6 km-long, along pre-defined trails to count signs and sightings of medium to large mammals. These will be conducted by two trained rangers 6 km-long from each of five ranger posts.

2) Focal group follows of semi-habituated groups of Sanje mangabey (Cercocebus galeritus sanjei) in Mwanihana forest; this is a strictly endemic, endangered monkey and the flagship species of the Udzungwa Mountains. Demography data will be collected regularly.

3) Transects to record human disturbance in forest sites (mainly tree and pole cutting, hunting, firewood collecton), according to a simple protocol that has been successfully deployed in several forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains.

Read about Francesco's previous project http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org/rsg/Projects/FrancescoRovero or for more information contact francesco.rovero@mtsn.tn.it or go to http://www.udzungwacentre.org

Project Update: August 2009

Training rangers and park ecologists in censusing large mammals in the Udzungwa Mountains National Park.

The project started and developed very well, and it is currently at the final phases of implementation, with the most challenging part being the complete handing-over of conducting the large mammal census to rangers. With the park ecologist and project team, we are also working on data compilation, data analysis and report preparation. Of the various project phases, the most challenging and important has been the establishment of the ranger-based monitoring.

As planned, two transects for counting large mammals have been established from each of 5 ranger posts in the Udzungwa Mountains National Park (see map). Rangers have been trained on data collection and use of GPS (see photo), and initial, trial censuses have been supervised by a team of two experienced field technicians, who visited each post every month. We believe it is a great achievement for a forest park to have established a standardized monitoring programme such as this, and we will work to ensure that it continues in the best possible way.

Final Report

Read about the activities undertaken and findings of this project in the final report below.

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