Uluguru Mountains Biodiversity Conservation Project

The Uluguru Mountains

Paul Buckley and Zul Bhatia
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Orginally printed in The Arc Journal, Issue No. 7 May 1998

Bird Life International, represented in Tanzania by the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania (WCST), is undertaking a global initiative to document the world's key sites for birds and wider biodiversity, known as Important Bird Areas (IBAs). For example in Africa the first of many country directories has been published (for Ethiopia), and the Tanzanian directory will be published this year.

IBAs encompass a huge range of habitat types and of states of protection. But many are in marginal areas inhabited by some of the world's poorest people. These people depend directly on the resources of IBAs for their livelihoods – on forests that create and conserve soil, supply fuelwood and medicinal plants, protect water catchments and guarantee water supplies; or wetlands that yield fish and other wild food, and supply a host of materials for building, weaving, etc. Even where it is not in their long-term interest, people may have few options to increase their desperately low living standards, but to over-use these resources. Forests such as those in the Eastern Arc are cleared because it is the simplest way to find the new land needed to grow food – even where this might lead to soil erosion, cause water supplies to dry up, and remove supplies of valuable forest products.

Most of the Eastern Arc forests have been recognized as Important Bird Areas and all require conservation action if they are to survive. Since 1993 a consortium of organizations has been supporting conservation action in one of the most valuable – the Uluguru Mountains.

The Uluguru form an outlying ridge east of the main range of Eastern Arc forests, comprising two mountain blocks, rising to over 2,600m. Fauna and flora includes 15 birds of special conservation interest, 11 endemic reptiles and amphibians, three threatned and two endemic mammals and even more endemic invertebrates and plants. Pride of place must go to the Uluguru bush shrike, critically threatned species found only in these forests. Few people have ever seen it and little is known of its ecology, although it is believed to live primarily in the lower sub-montane forest – just those areas, which are under most pressure. Apart from the exceptional biodiversity, the Uluguru forests are also very important as a major catchment area for rivers supplying water to larger towns (notably Dar es Salaam) and for preventing soil erosion on the steep sloped.

Where forest once extended far down the slopes, only about 270 km is thought to remain, mostly inside forest reserves.

Rapidly increasing human pressure on the land takes many forms: forest fragmentation, felling trees for timber, firewood and building pole collection, uncontrolled fires, clearance subsistence and cash-crop cultivation. The farmed sloped now, however, are an important producer of horticultural crops and are one of the two main locations supplying fruit and vegetables to Dar es Salaam. Long term sustainable agriculture on the slopes is essential for the welfare of the people of Uluguru and Dar es Salaam.

The forest and beekeeping division is active in forest conservation in the mountains. Protection of the Forest Reserves is primarily the responsibility of the catchment forest project (CFP) (NORAD funded) while the regional natural resources office (RNRO) coordinate conservation action both within and around the forests themselves.

However it is increasingly clear that the solution to these problems also lies in the hands of the human communities adjacent to the forest. Attempts to impose solutions on local communities have seldom been successful, in the Ulugurus (where it was tried in the 1950's) or anywhere else. Government resources to 'policy' the protection of Tanzania's forests are very limited. Even of the forest were protected by some 'fortress' policy, experience elsewhere tells us that the hostility engendered between Government and local people by this approach, bodes ill for the longer term. Simply, the forests will survive if local communities appreciate their value and wish them to remain (and critically, have some control over decisions) and will be degraded if they do not.

The Uluguru Slopes Planning Project (USPP) was set up with the aim of planning for the long-term conservation of the remaining forests. The project was a joint venture between the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania and BirdLife International (led by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds –RSPB – the UK partner), and mainly funded by the European Union. Zul Bhatia, a Tanzanian national with 18 years experience with the RSPB, was seconded to lead the project along with Victor Lyamuya and Lameck Noah of the RNRO.

A substantial amount was already known about the biodiversity of the mountains, in particular through an RSPB funded study in 1993, although opportunities were taken to add to this. The most exciting discovery during the project period was the discovery of the globally threatened Usambara Eagle Owl previously thought to be found only in two other mountain ranges. However the main emphasis has been on understanding the pressures on the forest, the perceptions of the local communities and how they could be better involved in the management of the forest so as to both improve their quality of life and ensure protection of the forest. For this work the partners sought advice from other experts, such as the human development agency, CARE Tanzania. (See page 4. Ed)

Much of the project thus involved visits to remote area of the mountains and conducting discussion sessions with local people. Rather than formal interviews or written questionnaires we used techniques (known as participating Rural Appraisal – PRA) that generated discussion between the group so that a less precise but more profound consensus developed about a range of issues. From this we developed a picture of the pressures facing the people and the forests, of the problems with existing enforcement measures, and of the high value that people actually do place on the forest. Differences between attitudes and patterns of land management were marked between villages – depending upon levels of poverty, religion and previous experience of land use projects. This cautions against adopting blanket solutions across the whole region, rather any future work must assist communities to implement the interventions that they deem most appropriate.

Inevitably, people's major pre-occupations were with livelihood issues such as food security, education and health. However resource scarcity, closely linked to the use of forest products, also featured strongly. Forest protection was not seen as popular or especially effective – traders from other regions, often given licenses by forest officials, with no benefits to local people mostly remove the timber harvested.

Nonetheless our findings lead us to believe that the forests of the Uluguru and their rich wildlife can be saved. Additional awareness of and benefits from the forest are critical – these can arise both from the linkage of other development assistance (agricultural assistance, education etc.) to forest protection, and more directly through benefits accrued from the forest. Whilst over exploitation cannot be permitted, there are opportunities to provide sustainable forest products (including limited timber, medicinal plants etc), and potential for tourism from the spectacular mountain scenery which could generate tangible benefits for some people living close to the forests.

An example of how these forces can work together for forest conservation is in the sector of honey production, which has traditionally been see as a damaging activity in forests because of the smoking of bee hives. However in the Ulugurus, burning of the forests from fires started in surrounding farmland is more of a problem. We believe that encouraging controlled bee farming in forest edge areas would create constituency with a powerful incentive to prevent such fires reaching the forest. This approach has implemented with great success in Bwindi National Park in Uganda.

The USPP completed its planning work in 1997. BirdLife International (led by WCST) and CARE Tanzania are now working closely with Tanzanian Government officials and the Uluguru Mountains Agriculture Development Project (UMADEP), with a view to developing a major conservation and development project, for which funds are currently being sought. UMADEP is already working very successfully in the area as are many other agencies. The emphasis of the new project should be on ensuring closer co-operation between all these agencies, and on assisting local initiatives, which are already underway. The project is heavily based on the aspirations of the villagers expressed through the USPP surveys and received the support of representatives of farmers networks at a stakeholder workshop held in Morogoro last year.

For example a number of local farmers are developing small-scale tree nurseries and woodlots on the mountain slopes. The project concluded that these were much more likely to provide local supplies and assist in reforestation of the mountains than the large Government owned nurseries in town. A study by two local Government foresters, funded by RSPB, found that very modest assistance to these farmers – in the form of seedlings and loans for equipment – could make a big difference to their ability to grow trees and encourage others to follow suit. WCST and UMADEP are now working together on a small project to provide this assistance.

One lesson from conservation and development projects elsewhere is that success cannot be achieved overnight. Long term commitment, in excess of that provided by many funding agencies is required. The commitment to sustainable development demonstrated already by the communities in the Ulugurus through a range of self help projects, and the close co-operation of agencies from different sectors offers some hope for the bush shrike and other inhabitants of these spectacular forests.