Implementing Agency:
Department For International Development (PAND)

Managing Institute:
WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature)

Project Code: 063-680-035	Start Date: 01-Aug-92	End Date: 01-Mar-2001
Commitment: £65,000	Status: Current	Type of Funding: Bilateral - JFS

Project Background:
Tanzania is a large country with a land area of approximately 89 million hectares. About 48% or approximately 43 million hectares are covered by forest and woodlands. Of these, only about 17% is managed or man made forests. About 91% of all energy consumed is fuelwood, which is directly derived from these forests and woodlands.

NRI, (1992) estimates that annual consumption of fuelwood in Tanzania exceeds the rate of replacment, which results in the shrinkage of forest areas by 0.4 million hectares annually. The main concern is therefore the balance between resource conservation and the level of resource utilization. However, concerns are not only with physical quantities but also the diversity contained therein.

Following the Tanzania Forests Action Plan TFAP, (1989), two important areas of biological diversity are identified which need urgent conservation. These are the Eastern arc Mountains with huge socio-economic and catchment importance, and the coastal forests, rich in biodiversity but also threatened by a combination of human activities.

Project Objectives:
To support the protection of existing coastal forest reserves and to develop and implement viable alternatives to current over-exploitation of resources.

Intended Outputs:
Support for initiatives by central and local government to protect existing coastal forest reserves developed.

Collection of information to correctly identify the conservation threats and their possible solutions in reserved coastal forests made.

Relief of pressure on the coastal forests through development and identified implementation of workable alternatives to over-exploitation of their resources undertaken.