FSC Issues and studies.

1. FSC Issues and studies. HJ van Hensbergen Wildhorus Limited

2. Pre Assessment Process. • Visits to KVTC January & April 2002 • Inspection of field operations. • Examination of management plans • Discussion with local stakeholders (2 villages). • Discussion with NGOs and regulatory authorities.

3. Key Issues Identified • Forest conversion. • Impact monitoring. • Vegetation identification in planning. • Water quantity. • Social assessment. • Social heritage information.

4. FSC Criterion 6.10 • Forest conversion to plantations or non-forest land uses shall not occur, except in circumstances where conversion: • a) entails a very limited portion of the forest management unit; and • b) does not occur on high conservation value forest areas; and • c) will enable clear, substantial, additional, secure, long term conservation benefits across the forest management unit.

5. Environmental Impact Monitoring • Frontier (an NGO active in the area) have conducted monitoring of large game, butterflies & rodents in plantations. • Main issue is impact of teak plantation on remaining Miombo. • Monitoring system to be developed based on butterflies and birds.

6. Design of monitoring system. • Identify undisturbed, lightly disturbed and heavily disturbed miombo areas as reference sites. • Use standardised sampling to identify bird and butterfly communities representative of these. • Birds and butterflies are good monitoring tools since their movement means they integrate the environment in space and time. • Use ordination to monitor the movement of communities in two dimensional space.

7. Ordination Results. Recovering Recently Burnt Unburnt

8. Identifying sites to be excluded from planting. • Existing system is largely based on trees. • There is a need to incorporate the rich ground level flora into the process. • The system must be usable by the existing site selection teams after training. • The system must be cost-effective, cheap and quick.

9. Identifying plant communities. • Braun-Blanquet Relevee. • Two Way Indicator Species Analysis. • Identifies Plant Communities. • Enables communities to be recognised using indicator plant species characteristic of the community • Site selection teams can be trained to recognise indicator species. • Local knowledge (Tanzanian experts) can then be used to decide which communities need extra protection.

10. Water Quantity • Social Stakeholders expressed concerns about teak trees drying up streams. • This concern is reasonable since other plantation species have significant impact on streams in other parts of the world. • It is necessary to evaluate the likely impact of teak trees planted in the scale and planting pattern found in the Kilombero Valley on stream flow.

11. Hydrological Modelling. • There is a good scientific understanding of the impact of trees on stream flow from numerous studies around the world. • A variety of catchment models have been developed to make predictions about hydrological impacts. • A hydrologist well qualified in this field will develop models of representative Kilombero Valley sub-catchments in order to assess the impact of teak and to make recommendations about planting distances from stream edges. • It is known that trees planted close to streams have a much higher impact on stream flow than trees in the middle of the plantation

12. Social Impact Assessment • KVTC must understand the effect of its activities on the society of the districts. • KVTC must have detailed knowledge of the social situation in the villages close to its plantations. • Income • Population, size and composition • Food availability, water availability, health. • Dependence on natural resources, forest land. • Main risks to population. • Communications, transport.

13. Social Assessment • Official records and maps • Discussions with village and ward officers. • Interviews with interest groups. • Women, Beekeepers, farmers, herders. • Interviews with health officials. • Interviews with social NGOs.

14. Social Heritage Resources. • All societies exist in a historical and cultural context. • Part of this context is represented by important sites on the ground. • Graves, holy places, battle sites, ancestral homesteads. • These must be identified where possible and protected from abuse. • In Kilombero these sites are likely to be recent because of the recent human history which has displaced most of the original inhabitants.

15. Tanzanian Heritage • Tanzania is known to be one of the cradles of the evolution of man. • These prehistoric sites are important to Tanzania as a nation and to mankind in general. • If there are such sites in the Kilombero region they should be identified and given appropriate protection.

16. Archaeological survey • Recent sites will be identified as part of the social survey. • An archaeological survey conducted by Tanzanian and foreign experts will try to identify sites of prehistoric occupation. • Management advice will be developed so that these may be maintained in good order.