Conservationists have launched a 20-year-long project to protect what is arguably Tanzania’s most biologically rich landscape: the Udzungwa Mountains. The strategy places notable emphasis on communities living here, with more than half of its budget allocated to social and economic projects and managing human-wildlife conflict. The Udzungwa Mountains’ evergreen forests, woodlands and grasslands are home to plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Scientists, however, estimate that over the last 2,000 years the massif has lost more than three-quarters of its forest cover. In the past century, expansion of small-scale farming, tea and exotic timber plantations, and hardwood logging have been primary drivers of deforestation. Udzungwa red colobus. Image courtesy Trevor Jones. A forest research camp in the Udzungwa Mountains. Image courtesy Nikolaj Scharff. While the rate of forest loss has slowed in some areas since 1992, when formal conservation areas were established, Trevor Jones, director of strategy and development at the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program (STEP), says the goal now is to halt deforestation entirely, and eventually reverse it. The Udzungwa Landscape Strategy (ULS) was launched in October last year. A collaborative effort between conservation groups, government agencies and communities, the ULS aims to safeguard three key protected areas in Udzungwa, the largest among a dozen isolated massifs in the Eastern Arc, a mountain chain stretching between Tanzania and Kenya. “The opportunity that we saw, that we wanted to focus on, was the protection of these three core protected areas, which is only about 60% of the area…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post New strategy launched to protect Tanzanian biodiversity hotspot first appeared on EnviroLink Network.