Socioeconomic Factors Determining Extraction of Non-timber Forest Products on the Slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
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Socioeconomic Factors Determining Extraction of Non-timber Forest Products on the Slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania Hawa Mushi 1 & Pius Z. Yanda 2 & Michael Kleyer 1 Accepted: 11 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) from natural forests in sub-Saharan Africa provide significant benefits to rural communities. In this study conducted on the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, we assumed that the extraction of NTFPs by local communities is related to sex, income, age, household size, and distance from the forest. We interviewed 313 household heads from six villages. We employed a logistic regression with a logit link to test the significance among the variables. Younger females of larger households with lower income and less cultivated land cut fodder and collected firewood more frequently than other villagers. Firewood collection frequency decreased with increasing distance from village to forest whereas fodder collection frequency increased. Men collected medicinal plants more frequently than younger women and if the distance from the village was greater. For firewood and fodder extraction, inter-village variation was greater than intra-village variation, suggesting that differences in access to infrastructure and alternative fodder sites also strongly determined NTFP extraction. Our results contribute to a better targeted participatory forest management. Keywords Fodder . Firewood . Fruits . Vegetables . Medicinal plants . Non-timber forest products forest management . Gender . Age . Income . Logistic regression . Chagga communities . Mount Kilimanjaro . Tanzania
Introduction The world loses an estimated 13 million ha of forest and up to 40,000 forest dependent species every year (Kremen et al. 2000). On the other hand, natural forests provide multiple ecosystem services to local communities (Costanza et al. 1997). Households often rely on resources available in forested areas, such as wood for cooking, heating, and construction (Naughton-Treves et al. 2007) or forage for livestock (Infield 1988; Neumann 1998). Many protected forests are located in regions of poverty (Sunderlin et al. 2005), and local communities that depend on forest products for a large proportion of their subsistence-based livelihoods are often perceived as a threat to forest conservation (Padoch 1992; Carpentier et al. 2000; Mbile et al. 2005). In 2001 the World Bank assessed the
* Michael Kleyer [email protected] 1
Landscape Ecology Group, Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany
2
Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar Es Salaam, P.O. BOX 35097, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
number of forest-dependent people globally to be 1.6 billion (World Bank 2001, 2004). Plants harvested in tropical forests in Africa have a range of uses from food to medicine to manufacture of household utensils (Peters and Mundial 1996). Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) embody all biological matter of wild plants and animals other than t
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