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 315

tional inputs by trained extension workers.
Demonsraion plots are a major component of
successful extension and educaion programmes.
Only recently have professional wildlife courses at
tertiary levels incorporated elements of forest
ecology, forest wildlife and catchment planning
into their syllabuses. The degree courses in Wild-
life Ecoloy at the Universiy of Dar es Salaam
devoted lecture and field tour ime to forest study
(Rodgers, 1984). Conservaion and natural forest
components were largely neglected in the iniial
syllabuses of the university's forestry degree pro-
gramme, emphasis being placed on wood produc-
ion from pine plantaions.
Children's conservation educaion in East
Africa was pioneered by Kenya's Wildlife Clubs
and then followed by Malihai in Tanzania.
Neither have concenrated on forest issues,
although IUCN funded a brief survey of Usam-
bara educaional needs with Malihai assistance.
The Ministry of Natural Resources in Tanzania
has undertaken some extension work, and a
model programme of ecodevelopment with con-
siderable educaional elements has been started in
East Usambara with EEC funding. These efforts,
however, are mere tokens; the need is enormous
and coninually growing. Govenment and non-
govenmental organisaions alike must devote
greater attention to all forms of environmental
educaion.

cept of monetary value on resources, and the
problem of 'development projects' warrant
increased attenion. It has taken the developed
world many decades to develop the now powerful
environmental lobbies to argue for conservaion.
But it will sill be decades before such forces are
operaive in easten Africa, notwithstanding some
limited successes by Kenya's Wildlife Clubs.
Much concern for Africa's natural resources (and
elsewhere in the tropics) comes from foreigners,
from Europe and North America. Too much
pressure or vociferous appeal can be counter-
producive: 'Now they have desroyed all their
forests, who are they to tell us what to do with
ours?' If the West wishes Africa to conserve its
natural resources, then it must help subsidise the
costs involved in such conservaion. Frequently it
is the foreigners who reap the benefits of such
conservaion, if not first-hand as tourists, then at a
distance via television and coffee-table topics.
Tanzanians rarely get such opportuniies.
A second topic of concen is pricing of natural
resources. Timber is expensive; fuelwood is free,
but costs effort; water is free. Fuel and water are
essenials, and are resources in dwindling supply.
They might be better husbanded if there were
some monetary value attached to their producion.
Forests could be judged in cumecs of water, not
cubic metres of wood. People could pay a iny
sum to illusrate that there is a value, and that the
product requires care.
East Africa's mountain forests have escaped
much of the land use conflict over hydroelectric
reservoirs and forest loss, common in much of the
tropics. Lowland forests, especially those along
rivers, can be at risk. Hughes (1984) discusses the
ecological problems of the Tana floodplain forests
following river impoundment. Forests are at risk
from other development aciviies, however. The
scale of degradaion in the East Usambaras from
what was envisaged as long-term sustainable log-
ging eploitation is a case in point. Hosier (1988)
discusses the economic costs of forest degrada-
ion in easten Africa. Railway development in
Magombera (Rodgers et al., 1979), roads in the
Ulugurus to service radio towers and in the
Uzungwas to service pulp mills, are two immedi-
ate concens. Impact assessments of development

Politics and economis
Our abiliies to implement and maintain con-
servaion srategies are often determined by
poliical and economic forces rather than biology
and technical experise. Consevaion requires
land, forested land, often ferile; such land is in
short supply and in high demand by rural popula-
ions. It is difficult or poliicians, especially those
from forest areas, to argue against such demands.
Conservaion costs money, and taking forests out
of producive use (imber and fuelwood) reduces
economic inputs to local and naional exchequers.
It is difficult for many administrators to see value
in increased conservaion. In this secion I wish to
consider just three issues of poliical and econ-
omic concen, though there are many more. The
role of the 'Westen developed naions', the con-