Programs

Training & Capacity Building

Successful conservation of the Selous Niassa Ecosystem will ultimately depend upon local interest and capacity to engage in effective natural resource management through the establishment of Wildlife Management Areas (WMA). WMAs are land set aside by a village government and approved by the Tanzanian government for village-based natural resource conservation and sustainable use. WMAs are a core element of the nation’s plan to devolve control over and benefits from wildlife and natural resources outside protected areas to local communities.

With support from the Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation, PPF is contributing to a large initiative to create a wildlife corridor that will extend from the Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania to the Niassa Game Reserve in northern Mozambique. If successful, the project will result in the largest, trans-boundary conservation area in all of Africa and will protect the world’s largest remaining miombo woodland. To help accomplish this challenge, we are assisting a select group of villages in the southern, most remote part of the Selous Niassa Ecosystem that are interested to begin the WMA application process, yet lack the capacity to meet governmental application requirements such as the development of land use plans and environmental impact assessments. The following training and capacity building activities are currently being implemented:

• People & Predators Fund staff has met with local residents, village officials and district wildlife authorities to convey the opportunities and processes associated with establishing a WMA. The Fund will help clarify and support the procedures for establishing and registering a Community Based Organization in selected villages.

• 21 village leaders and game scouts received scholarships and attended the Likuyu Community-Based Conservation Training Institute, which is designed to prepare them for establishing and managing a WMA. These trained individuals will continue to educate other community members in sustainable natural resource management and use, thereby increasing the overall educational impact of this activity.

• In the next year, the Fund is proposing to help facilitate preliminary wildlife and natural resource surveys to identify core forest habitat to be conserved within the future WMAs. The information to be collected includes available habitat versus gardens, presence of important wildlife and tree species, human-wildlife conflicts, poaching incidences, and human livelihood impacts. The information collected will provide villages with the tools to identify economic opportunities for sustainable forest use, develop land use plans, and assess the environmental impact of proposed actions in our second year of the project.

Because the preliminary stages of the program have been a success, the People and Predators Fund is currently in the process of seeking funds for an expanded program that will include three new focal villages. These villages will emulate, learn from, and expand upon the existing program as they develop their initiatives. Additionally, we will facilitate meetings among the villages to provide an open forum for communication and to ensure that efforts for forest conservation are synchronized.

If you would like to contribute to this program and help build the capacity of local Tanzanians to conserve wildlife, please visit our donate page and specify “Training and Education Program.”

programs

current
Livestock Predation

Conservation Education

Internships