Fifteen Years of Community-Based Monitoring of Mammals and Birds in Forest Stewardship Council Certified Forest Areas in Tanzania

Katjia Akeena Dawila , Jasper Makala, Glory Massao, Finn Danielsen , Ida Theilade, Søren Brofeldt, Neil Burgess

Certified community-managed forests are rare in East Africa, and the use of community-based monitoring to track biodiversity change in such forests is rarer still. We analyse 15 years of community-collected data on the status and abundance of mammals and birds from 10 village land forest reserves in southern coastal Tanzania, managed under a Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme facilitated by Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative. Using standardised encounter rates from regular patrol data, we assess biodiversity trends, compare detection between harvest and no-take zones, and examine the relationship between encounter rates and proximity to protected areas. Globally threatened mammal and bird species were recorded consistently throughout the monitoring period, with limited evidence of change in biodiversity importance over the period of logging activity. Encounter rates did not differ significantly between harvest and no-take zones and showed no clear relationship with distance to protected areas, suggesting the community-managed forests function as important habitats for mammals and birds. Our findings demonstrate that community-elected committees of forest users in Tanzania can generate highly valuable biodiversity data to inform community decision-making over sustained periods within a formal certification framework. Recommendations are made for further improvements to data collection and data management to strengthen the community-based monitoring program going forward.