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Global Conservation Program Partner:
African Wildlife Foundation (AWF)
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The Kilimanjaro Heartland is a large-scale landscape of
exceptional wildlife and natural value that is essential to
conservation in Africa. |
With the support of USAID’s Global Conservation Program (GCP), African Wildlife Foundation’s Conservation of Resources in African Landscapes (CORAL) program aims to conserve habitat and wildlife at large scales, while meeting human needs and aspirations. The program focuses on “Heartlands”, defined as large African landscapes of exceptional wildlife and natural value extending across state, private and community lands. These priority landscapes have the potential to conserve viable populations of wildlife such as lions, elephants, wild dogs, zebras, as well as key habitats and ecological systems, well into the future.
Within each Heartland, the goal is to define the functioning landscape, establish priority conservation targets, and determine critical threats to these targets. This leads to the development of conservation strategies by, and, for the benefit of communities, local, and national governments. AWF’s Heartlands work aims to increase the area under improved conservation management; increase the participation and capacity of landowners; and improve the management of key conservation targets.
USAID, through the GCP, has supported AWF’s work in four African Heartlands: the transboundary Kilimanjaro Heartland in Kenya and Tanzania; the Samburu Heartland in Kenya; the Maasai Steppe in Tanzania; and the transboundary Zambezi Heartland in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Investment in these sites is a long-term endeavor. AWF is implementing strategies that will ensure positive conservation impact for years to come. Priority interventions are focused around several themes which include: support for improved protected area management, resource monitoring, participatory land use planning, wildlife-based enterprise development, securing local livelihoods, and capacity building with local institutions to strengthen community management of natural resources.
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| Map of Kilimanjaro Heartland. |
The Kilimanjaro Heartland, is a 2.3 million hectare landscape that straddles the Kenya—Tanzania border. It includes the semi-arid savanna of the greater Amboseli ecosystem which lies just north and west of Africa’s highest peak and most recognized symbol, Mt. Kilimanjaro. The Heartland’s diverse terrain includes the traditional pastureland of the Maasai people, Amboseli National Park, Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro and Arusha National Parks, and Lake Natron and the low-lying savannas of Longido. The Heartlands team is focused on transboundary challenges such as the conservation of elephants, wildlife migration routes and dispersal areas, and the maintanence of landscape scale hydrological systems. This collaborative effort is helping the people and governments of Kenya and Tanzania to work together on shared conservation challenges. Transboundary collaboration has led to joint patrols to monitor wildlife, and reduced wildlife poaching across the border. AWF and local and national governments are developing a management plan for the Heartland that includes a mixture of reserves, community land, and private holdings. The goal is to create a large enough area for the survival of lions, elephants, and other endangered wildlife.
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| Map of Samburu Heartland. |
The Samburu Heartland, a semi-arid plateau of extraordinary natural value in Kenya, is located north of the equator and east of the Great Rift Valley. It includes parts of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare National Parks and three National Reserves (Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba). Land use in the area is a mix of private farms, traditional pastoralism, community lands, and public game reserves, yet it is one of few places in the country where wildlife populations are increasing. The heartland supports wild dogs, elephant, rhino, cheetah, buffalo and lion, and is particularly important as a critical conservation site for the increasingly endangered northern savanna specialist species including the reticulated giraffe, Somali ostrich, oryx, gerenuk and the highly endangered Grevy’s zebra. AWF is working to address the root causes of incompatible land use, such as land tenure, perceptions of wildlife, competition for water, and economic incentives or disincentives for saving habitat. Ecological assessments have been completed in targeted areas of the Heartland, including an aerial wildlife survey, GIS mapping of conservation areas and inventory of critical water points on group ranches surrounding Samburu National Reserve.
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| Map of Maasai Steppe Heartland. |
The Maasai Steppe Heartland encompasses 3.5 million hectares of east African woodland savannah in northern Tanzania. The area includes Tarangire and Lake Manyara National Parks, that lie within extensive rangelands, much of which are the traditional grazing lands of the Maasai pastoralists, interspersed with smaller blocks of private and government-owned lands. The primary challenge in this biologically rich, yet increasingly fragmented landscape is protecting the tracts of land, or “corridors” that connect and sustain key conservation areas. Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Park are 40 kilometers apart. The corridor that connects them is critical for wildlife migration and dispersal, particularly elephants. About ten years ago, this migration route began to disappear due to habitat fragmentation and degradation. In response, AWF is working to improve the conservation management of the Manyara Ranch, an important land unit of the larger Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem. Recently, a detailed corridor analysis was completed to identify elephant movements to and from Manyara Ranch, and to establish corridors between national parks and other areas of the landscape. Training and operational support for community game scouts has also been given on threat data collection, and detailed land-use surveys have been conducted with communities that border Manyara Ranch.
The Zambezi Heartland, supported under the first phase of GCP from 1999 to 2003, is a cross-border management and cooperation initiative in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. It is also an example of mixed land use (communal areas, private farms, and public protected areas) with large animals, such as elephant and buffalo, sharing the same land as the herders and farmers. The area is critical for wildlife as it provides access to the Zambezi River.
More information is available at AWF’s website.
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Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:28:19 -0500
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