February 2020
MAP ran two successful community-based ecological mangrove restoration workshops, back-to-back, for ‘Save Our Mangroves Now!’, an initiative led by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation & Development, WWF and IUCN. The participants were the Tanzanian Forest Service Agency (TFS) instructors from the Forestry Training Institute (FTI) Olmotonyi, current TFS field staff and community conservation group leaders.
The training took place in Tanga, northern Tanzania. As with all MAP’s CBEMR training, it was a mix of classroom theory, field trips, group work, presentations by MAP trainers and local experts.
In addition to covering mangrove ecology, biology, planting failures and the CBEMR process, there was much discussion with the local conservation groups about the local threats to mangroves and the reasons for mangrove loss – the under-digging of mangroves for fishing bate worms.
“My expectation was to learn only about how to teach community to conserve the mangrove. But the experience went beyond that as we have learned many important things which I hadn’t understood before, e.g. hydrology, monitoring stressors and to avoid planting in mudflat.”
(From an anonymous evaluation feedback form)
“I will integrate this into my work. This is the best way I have ever seen before on any natural resource restoration and rehabilitation. It works!”
(From an anonymous evaluation feedback form)
