The conservation of the forest resources of eastern Africa: past influences, present practices and future needs - Biogeography and Ecology of the Rain Forests of Eastern Africa - page 306

adjacent rural communiies, there is little hard
experience to show how this may be done. Joint
or paricipatory management approaches with
local people are showing considerable success:
see below. The Wo rld Conseoation Statey states
that

Lucas (1990) warns, there is sill a need to ensure
that core areas are properly protected. The outer
buffer zone is where resource sharing should take
place (Oldfield, 1987; Sayer, 1991).
The long-term ecological effects ofthe massive
increase of mechanised logging in the East Usam-
bara Mountains have not been fully documented.
There are several general statements among con-
ribuions to Hamilton & Bensted-Smith (1990).
Some results are clear, however. On public land,
heavy felling in primary forest has allowed local
culivators to plant maize in he huge gaps. Forest
will not regrow. Gaps in reserves are invaded by
'weeds', including Caramom spp. and other
Zingiberaceae, grasses, and many climbers which
form a dense ground mat with little woody
regeneration except the alien Macsopsis. Diversity
is reduced, straificaion is reduced and light and
temperatures all rise. K. M. Howell personal
communicaion, 1989) recorded a savanna species
of frog in such a gap - the first collecion for the
Usambaras. Smaller gaps following limited pit-
sawing do have a variety of early succession trees
including Newtonia buchananii, but also Maesopsis.
The incompatibility of different requirements
from forests means that management compromise
must take place. Improved land use planning poli-
cies, and pracices which ascribe diferent intensi-
ties of exploitation to different forests is one form
of compromise. Management objecives for each
forest which provide block-based internal zona-
ion, and the protecion of primary forest by more
intensively used buffers, are examples of how land
use pracice may work. These ideas are discussed
more fully in the next secion (p. 309). However,
efficient land use planning is dependent on accu-
rate data sets. Methodologies for rapid survey of
forest resources, forest values and the people
pressures on these resources are described by, for
example, Synott (1977) and Hall (1986).

Tropical forests are an important renewable
resource, acting as a resevoir of geneic
diversity, yielding a continuous supp ly of produas if
man aged sustainably [my sress] ...

(IUCN, 1980)

The Man and the Biosphere Programme of
UNESCO (see von Droste, 1984) has a mandate
to integrate conservaion and human needs,
through its Biosphere Reserves. McNeely (1984)
stated that biosphere reserves have yet to succeed
with this goal. An African example of these prob-
lems is that of Tai Forest Naional Park, Ivory
Coast (Roth, 1986).
Biology has yet to provide us with soluions to
problems of how much resource exploitation is
permissible before conservation values decrease.
We may be at fault for not phrasing precise ques-
ions to be answered: what is the effect on this
species, or on overall diversity, or on uture im-
ber species girth increment, or on water flow. We
are certainly at fault for the virtual lack of research
effort addressing these problems. The same pat-
ten of orest use will probably afect diferent
values in different ways.
Johns (1985) has demonstrated that the logging
of primary forest in Malaysia need not lead to a
decrease in numbers of all primates; some thrive
in secondary regrowth, others such as orang-utan
decline. Shelton (1985) reviews the subject of
logging intensity on wildlife. Skorupa & Kasenene
(1984) discuss logging intensity on natural tree
mortality and show mechanised harvesing to be
especially destrucive.
A more recent set of ideas on designing protec-
ted areas focuses on the need to integrate the park
or reserve into the surrounding land use pattern.
Protected areas cannot funcion as isolated
fortresses or sterile no-go areas; they have to con-
tribute to sustainable development of adjacent
rural communiies (see, for example, McNeely &
MacKinnon, 1989; McNeely, 1990). However, as

The conservaion and management of
easten Africa's orests and orest
resources

Consevation strategies
Previous secions have described the history of
forest resources in easten Africa and discussed