Govt prepares plan for mangrove conservation

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania is expected to come up with a new management plan for mangrove conservation.

The adoption of the new plan will replace the existing one, which has been in place for nearly three decades, according to director of resources management at the Tanzania Forest Services Agency (TFS), Mr Zawadi Mbwambo.

Opening a four-day National Mangroves Stakeholders Workshop yesterday, Mr Mbwambo said that the government through the agency and other local and international institutions were establishing data, which will be used to formulate the plan.

“The existing mangrove management plan was established 27 years ago. However, it has posed a challenge that we are currently not certain of the status of mangrove production, deficit or destruction,” he said.

The government is currently prohibiting people from harvesting mangrove because they are also facing extinction.

 “We have suspended issuance of licences for harvesting mangroves because we doubt that they are among the endangered species,” he noted.

According to him, the new management plan was delayed for years due to financial constraints.

“Surveying areas with mangroves is quite difficult due to the nature of the places where they grow. We can’t walk into water to count them. We need water vessels like boats or some other technologies to do so,” he explained.

However, Mr Mbwambo disclosed that there were some institutions including the Wetland International, World Bank and University of Dar es Salaam Institute of Marine Science in Zanzibar and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which are currently collecting data.

He was positive that the data will be gathered after one year and thereafter the new mangrove management plan will be developed.

Wetland has spent about Euro 150, 000 (equivalent to Sh399.76 million) for conducting a survey of mangroves at the Rufiji Delta in Kibiti district, Coast Region.

The survey is part of its 10-year project, which aims at conducting the survey of the entire coastal line where mangroves grow, according to director of East Africa for Wetland International, Ms Julie Mulonga.