Forest Regeneration in Tanzania

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The local communities in the vicinity of Amani include villages, primary and secondary schools, religious institutions, government bodies such as Amani Nature Reserve, tea companies, and Non-Governmental Organizations. Awareness about various aspects of this applied research, including benefits to local people, is enabled through participation of some members of the local village communities. At least two of these individuals are members of local village environmental committees, and they, together with other villagers who are involved on a more temporary basis, help impart their knowledge to the communities. When additional funding is obtained, conservation and educational outputs will be further developed to integrate local village environmental committees. Awareness creation will involve distribution of both hard copies of the seedling guide to the interested parties and information on the website will also be distributed, targeting those who have access to the Internet.

As development of this project continues, web-based keys to the seedlings and germination and seedling growth databases will be burned on cd-rom for distribution to parties where Internet access is not available. The process of creating research and conservation tools such as ours is dynamic, in that as we get feedback, improvements will be made to meet demands of both specialized (e.g. scientists) and more general (e.g. villagers, managers) audiences.

With easy keys to suggest local uses of the seedlings of vascular plants, it is anticipated that these dual-language guides will facilitate interest for future restoration programs that fully integrate local communities. One such programme that is currently ongoing is that of the Tanzania Conservation Forest Group and World Wildlife Fund, where a corridor is planned to link Derema forest with Amani Nature Reserve.

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