The Arc Projects - Ten Years On

The Eastern Arc
Scientists refer to the nine mountain ranges situated in a half-moon shape in southern Kenya and eastern Tanzania as the Eastern Arc. Geologists date these ranges at nearly 100 million years old. The rainforests that cover them are of a similar age. One of the oldest rainforests in the world, the Arc is one of the top 20 "hot spots" for biodiversity in the world.

Scientists also call the Arc the "Galapagos of Africa" -- an island chain of cool, moist forests in an arid sea of hot savanna. Each range has species of plants and animals not found across the dry savanna in the next forest island. Collectively, the Arc is the sole habitat of thousands of plants and animals found no where else.

The Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG)
Today, the TFCG, the organization we built in Tanzania over the last decade, is on the forefront of African Rainforest Conservation.

The TFCG has pioneered local forest management and grass roots community conservation. For the first time in a hundred years, since the dawn of the colonial era, local villages, rather than the central government, are managing the forests, taking medicinal plants and dead wood for fuel and protecting the forest from timber poaching, cattle grazing and clearing. Now that they are not officially banned by the government but have a stake in the forest, they are protecting it.

Over 45,000 people, in thirty villages in three mountain ranges and two coastal forests, are currently reached by project activities.

Over a million trees have been planted, both to restore damaged forests and supply villages with fuel-wood and timber.

Over a 100 self-help groups--men's groups, women's groups, youth groups, church groups--have been founded for tree planting and income-generating activities.

Over 50 village schools now include our environmental education classes.

The TFCG is managed by a board of directors, chaired by Patrick Qorro, a long-time member of parliament and leading Tanzanian environmental advocate.

Based in Dar Es Salaam, Nike Doggart, who has an environmental degree from Oxford is the Coordinator. Charles Meshack, a Sokoine University forester, is the Projects Officer. Adrian Kahamela, a Sokoine University forester, is the Network Officer. Based in the field, five other university foresters serve as project managers. A full time Botanical Collector gathers plants in on-going safaris and a search for new species. Thirty local employees work in the projects.

1991
The TFCG was registered in 1985 by a group of scientists led by Dr. Alan Rogers as a Tanzanian non-governmental organization with the mission to promote the conservation of highly bio-diverse forests. In the 1980s, the TFCG formulated the original proposal of what was to become the Udzungwa Mountain National Park, (see article How We Started a National Park), the only park in the Eastern Arc Mountains. Also in the 80s, the TFCG briefly owned a pristine forest in the Usambara Mountains, and lobbied the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania's forestry college, into making it a university research forest.

In 1991, Tanzania Wildlife Fund vice president Carter Coleman joined the board of the TFCG and recruited scientists such as Jon Lovett, a botanical expert on the Arc, Richard Fuller, the resident representative of the United Nation's Food & Agriculture Organization, and Katia DeJarnette, the wife of the American ambassador to Tanzania, who renewed the group's registration with the government. The new board began laying the ground work for the first community conservation project in the Eastern Arc.

1992
Late in the year, the first community conservation project was initiated at the Lulanda forest in the southern Udzungwa Mountains. Scientists have described Lulanda as a "handful of diamonds," due to its small size (800 acres) and exceptional biodiversity. Lulanda is the last habitat of a coffee species, a frog and a genus of trees. Meetings were held with villagers to develop a grass-roots approach which addressed their needs and aspirations.

1993
Emmanuel Mdemu, who holds agricultural degrees from Tanzania and Canada, was hired as the manager of the Lulanda Project. He quickly established tree nurseries which produced 200,000 seedlings; demonstration farms for sustainable agriculture; a building for a maze milling machine, a device which greatly reduces the village women's workload and serves as a magnet that draws women for classes in child care and family planning. Mdemu collaborated with a government village nurse who has enabled over half the child-bearing women to obtain birth control and led the women's group. Mdemu also started the regeneration of rainforest in a critical gap between two fragments of the forest--a corridor of trees that will link the two forests and strengthen their gene pools.

1994
Andrew Perkin and Alex Hipkiss, British graduate students, and Aidano Makange, a Tanzanian with experience in agricultural extension, launched the Kambai Forest Conservation Project in the East Usambara Mountains, the most bio-diverse range in the Arc. The Kambai forest, totaling 12,980 acres, is bordered by four villages with a population of 4,700. The approach at Kambai was agro-forestry and education--to encourage villagers to plant trees to meet their fuel and timber needs, help them improve their farm yields and to sensitize them in the importance of preserving the natural forest.

An experiment in regenerating forest with indigenous trees on barren mountaintop, the Ngulwi Afforestation Project, was launched in the West Usambara mountains where 90% of the natural forest has been cut for farmland. Prior to the Ngulwi project, little research has been done on what local trees will grow well in a denuded environment.

1995
The projects at Lulanda, Ngulwi and Kambai continued to grow, stressing village involvement in tree planting. 200,000 trees were planted in Lulanda, 50,000 in Kambai, 20,000 in Ngulwi.

G.A. Mwakatobe, a graduate of the Sokoine University with a BA in forestry, was hired as forest officer. Mwakatobe maintained communication between the three far flung projects and the managing board of directors in Dar Es Salaam--a tough job that entailed traveling thousands of miles, often by bus and foot. Nick-named Shaka Zulu for his zeal, Mwakatobe said, "Sometimes a forester must be a warrior."

1996
Charles Meshack, a Sokoine University forester, was hired to live full-time in Lulanda in order to involve the villagers with the project to a greater degree and teach environmental education in village schools. Alex Hipkiss moved from Kambai to Dar Es Salaam, to become Coordinator of the growing network.

1997
The TFCG's biannual newsletter, The Arc Journal, served as the official journal of the International Eastern Arc Conference, a gathering of scientists and conservationists sponsored by the United Nations.

1998
The Ambangulu Forest Conservation Project in the West Usamabaras was started with a grant from the Netherlands branch of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature. Ambangulu was recommended for priority action at the international Eastern Arc Conference, which noted that the forest may be the biologically richest site in all of Eastern Africa. Charles Moshe was hired as project manager.

The Lugoda-Lutali Forest Conservation project, also funded by the Dutch IUCN grant, is initiated in the southern Udzungwa Mountains.

2000
With a five year $1.5 million dollar grant from the Norwegian government, the TFCG initiated a joint project with Care International for a joint forest management project for the Ruvu and Pande Coastal forests.