- Conservationists and farmers have restored large parts of a forest reserve in Zambia in just four years through natural regeneration.
- The Katanino Forest Reserve had lost more than 58% of its forest cover by 2019, when dozens of families living inside it and cutting trees to make charcoal were finally evicted by state officials.
- A restoration project launched that same year by conservation group WeForest and local partners has used assisted natural regeneration, a light-touch forest restoration method, to grow back more than 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of the reserve’s tree cover.
- The success is tempered by continued tree losses on farms outside the reserve, though WeForest is working to promote alternative livelihoods there that encourage farmers to protect trees on their land.
In 2019, there were around 100 families living in the Katanino Forest Reserve, cutting down trees to produce charcoal in mud-covered kilns, and selling the fuel by the bag on a nearby road leading to major cities in Zambia’s Copperbelt province. That same year, conservation group WeForest began working with the Zambian Forestry Department and members of the local community to restore the reserve. Four years on, hundreds of hectares of degraded forest have grown back from severed stumps.
Morton Shanzi, manager of the Katanino Forest Landscape Restoration Project, told Mongabay that before the restoration work, community members and Forestry Department officials had observed a steep decline in animal populations in the reserve. But as the project takes hold, there have been increased sightings of birds, reptiles and mammals. “Our law enforcement records show that the number of chance encounters with animals in the forest reserve has increased between 2021 and 2023,” he said.
Notable species that have reappeared include near-threatened African crowned eagles (Stephanoaetus coronatus) and vulnerable gaboon vipers (Bitis gabonica), as well as various species of small antelope and even carnivores like side-striped jackals (Canis adustus) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta).
Nearly half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) of forest have been lost across Copperbelt province since 2001. In contrast, satellite images collated since 2019 show that forest cover in Katanino has increased from 1,023 to 1,610 hectares (2,528 to 3,978 acres) across the 4,372-hectare (10,803-acre) reserve. These gains were not made through labor-intensive tree planting, but through assisted natural regeneration (ANR), which allows the trees to simply regenerate from stumps or intact root systems.
“There is no need for planting,” says Kenny Helsen, a monitoring and evaluation manager with WeForest. “We know that there is this high regeneration capacity from stumps, and the roots that are still there, so a lot of it basically grows on its own.”
Among the forests that possess this ability are those known collectively as miombo, which is the most common forest type in Zambia, covering nearly half of the country’s total landmass. Miombo comprises a species-rich mix of broad-leaved deciduous trees that include kaputu (Brachystegia spiciformis). Each spring these trees burst into dazzling new foliage that ranges in color from lime green, to burgundy, to ochre and red.
ANR is being applied in degraded woodlands across 60% of the reserve; planting nursery-raised seedlings has only been required in an area totaling around 9 hectares (22 acres). Those seedlings are still small, and weren’t included in the latest figures of forest recovery.
“ANR is a technique being used by a lot of restoration organizations worldwide now, because it’s a less resource-intensive method when you compare it with planting of trees where you need to grow all your seedlings from scratch,” says Sybryn Maes, a Belgian postdoctoral researcher who’s studying the regeneration of the miombo forest at Katanino and other tropical dry forests in South America.
ANR is perfectly suited to the miombo woodlands found across much of Southern Africa. A few months after being cut down, a typical miombo tree stump will send out new shoots. Despite this natural power, and the predominance of miombo woodlands, ANR still lacks the charismatic appeal of traditional tree planting in the eyes of the public, Maes says.
“It’s not like you can say, ‘I’ve planted 500 trees.’ You have to say, ‘I’ve assisted 500 seedlings.’ So for the general public it is much easier to talk about tree planting for restoration and to get them excited about that,” she told Mongabay in a 2023 interview.
The rapid restoration of lost woodland using this technique in Katanino — nearly 80% of which is miombo forest — is a conservation triumph, but trees outside the reserve continue to be lost, according to a recent remote-sensing survey conducted by WeForest, which also mapped tree cover changes in two concentric rings around the reserve.
Each of these rings, known as the buffer zone and the neutral zone, is 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide and densely populated with farmers. Forest loss within these two zones over the past four years was around 46% and 30% respectively.
“We know that when you prohibit people from going into the forest reserve to cut for charcoal, the chances are high that people will go somewhere else,” Helsen says.
After 93 families involved in charcoal production were evicted from the reserve in 2020, they moved into the buffer zone and began cutting down trees there instead, including on some plots where beekeeping was being promoted.
At the time, not all of the buffer zone residents who had signed up for beekeeping — and preserving trees on their farms to hang beehives in and provide flowers for bees to forage from — were fully invested. That changed as the first farmers began to earn money from honey toward the end of 2020.
More than 700 farmers in the buffer zone are now keeping bees, and tree losses on their plots are four times lower than elsewhere in the buffer zone. WeForest is also promoting conservation agriculture, forest-friendly goat rearing, and agroforestry: options for local villagers to increase their income in less damaging ways than cutting down trees to make charcoal.
Helsen says at the top of his organization’s agenda is making sure these alternative livelihoods will compete financially with charcoal production so that farmers don’t return to it once the project ends in five years’ time.
Charcoal production is estimated to contribute 3% to Zambia’s GDP; it employs around half a million mostly rural-based people, according to the Center for International Forestry Research. With 70% of Zambian households dependent on charcoal for heating and cooking, demand is unlikely to diminish soon.
Felix Kalaba, now the dean of the School of Natural Resources at Zambia’s Copperbelt University, has assessed carbon storage in plots of miombo woodlands recovering from charcoal production and agriculture as well as undisturbed primary forest. He and a colleague, Clare Quinn, found carbon stocks recovered well as these forests grew back, matching those of intact forest within 20 years.
“In miombo woodlands, promotion of mosaic restoration is ideal for small-scale farmers and charcoal producers since patches of forests are subjected to different uses. Mosaic restoration is suitable for areas with considerable differences in land use (such as agriculture, charcoal, human settlements, grazing), and populations that are between 10-100 persons/Km2, which are common in rural areas of miombo,” they wrote.
The implication is that assisted natural regeneration of forests like Katanino is a worthy candidate for inclusion in REDD+ schemes, with carbon credits potentially offering a new source of income for local people.
Helsen says the WeForest team is actively sharing lessons it has learned at Katanino with others involved in ecological restoration, and looking at expanding the project to other protected areas within Copperbelt province that have been similarly degraded.
Early intervention, however, is the key to successful restoration.
“When you come into the area in time, the root stock is still there, the stumps are still there,” he tells Mongabay.
“If you can set up a system where you can navigate the problems of the communities and make sure they don’t need to produce so much charcoal anymore, I think [ANR] can be a success in any miombo woodlands.”
Look at the birds
Katanino’s recovery is demonstrating that miombo trees can bounce back fairly rapidly under strict management, but the animals that share this ecosystem take longer to return and complete it.
A study published in 2016 looked into human impacts on miombo bird populations in Copperbelt province. It found that out of 41 cavity-nesting bird species, only five were found in disturbed forest, compared to 40 in intact forest.
Those missing from disturbed forest included southern ground hornbills (Bucorvus leadbeateri). These turkey-sized birds with thick curved bills, jet-black feathers and bright red facial skin are considered vulnerable to extinction due to habitat loss. They nest in natural cavities in mature trees within intact miombo forest. Such nesting sites would likely be stripped away by firewood collectors in unprotected sites, or burned in uncontrolled fires.
“The negative effects of disturbance of woodlands may result in the local extinction of certain bird species and significant impacts on the structure and behaviour of bird communities,” the study, led by Vincent Nyirenda at Copperbelt University, concluded.
Andrew Mbenjile, a project officer with conservation group BirdWatch Zambia, says a brief reconnaissance survey he and colleagues carried out in Katanino last October noted an absence of ground hornbills and some other cavity nesters like the closely related trumpeter hornbills (Bycanistes bucinator). But there were other hopeful signs of recovery: small birds of prey like buzzards and goshawks; waterbirds in a grassy wetland (dambo) inside the reserve; and healthy numbers of migrant species like European bee-eaters (Merops apiaster), barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) and broad-billed rollers (Eurystomus glaucurus).
Separately, a recent camera-trap survey by WeForest staff detected the presence of mammals. Among them were small duiker antelopes (Sylvicapra grimmia), blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis) and honey badgers (Mellivora capensis).
“This land was terribly degraded [10 years ago] and now there is some hope for it to be revived,” Mbenjile says.
“The miombo habitat is coming back to life.”
Restoring degraded forests may be key for climate, study says
Citation:
Nyirenda, V. R., Chewe, F. C., Chisha-Kasumu, E., & Lindsey, P. A. (2016). Nest sites selection by sympatric cavity-nesting birds in miombo woodlands. Koedoe, 58(1). doi:10.4102/koedoe.v58i1.1359
Banner image: Members of BirdWatch Zambia visiting the Katanino Forest Reserve. Image © WeForest
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