9. Management and Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources

There are very few areas of the natural forests and woodlands in the SADC sub-region that could be described as pristine woodlands or forests. Due to their degraded nature and high pressure to provide other important forest products, natural forests and woodlands in SADC countries only play a minor role in the provision of industrial roundwood. Until recently most countries in the SADC had almost similar forest management strategies, which were based on designating, protecting and managing the forests (Alden Wily and Mbaya, 2001). The concept of creating forest reserves and forests protected under national parks, prescription of their access and use was largely the central strategy in the conservation of forest genetic resources. The forest laws enacted in most countries, had provision for the regulation of timber extraction from natural forests, designation of protected species, the right to declare protection orders over private estates and to coerce local participation in fire-fighting (Alden Wily and Mbaya, 2001; Kohler, 2001). The proportion of natural forests under management plans is negligible in the SADC countries. Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe have very small forest areas under some form of management plan (FAO, 2000). Harvesting criteria for example, in most of the countries is usually selective harvesting of large diameter timber species while in South Africa, the harvesting criteria is called Senile Criteria Harvesting (SCH) which removes trees showing senility, declining vigour or low future life expectancy (Durrheim and Vermeulen, 1996). Two kinds of forest genetic conservation strategies namely in situ and ex situ are employed in conservation.

9.1 In situ

In situ conservation is the deliberate management and conservation of the species or its populations or individuals in the natural habitat. Emphasis in conservation of forest genetic resources has been on in situ conservation in contrast to crop genetic resources, which put more emphasis on ex situ conservation. In some SADC countries, the creation of forest reserves has been the main strategy of conserving forest genetic resources in situ. In addition to forest reserves, national parks and game reserves have also been used as additional conservation areas of forest genetic resources. The main drawback to the use of national parks as forest conservation areas is that, these game parks and reserves were designed principally for the protection and conservation of fauna. Where forest reserves exist some may not have been designed according to sound population genetic principles of forest tree species. The location of some of the national parks and forest reserves may have been dictated by other considerations such as political, social and economic constraints, thus some of the forests are in atypical environments (climatic and soil factors) limiting their value as conservation areas. Table 7 shows the area under protection either as forest reserves or in national parks and wildlife estates.

Table 7: Protected areas as forest reserves, national parks and game reserves*

* Sources: Country reports; FAO, 2000; Alden Wily and Mbaya, 2001;

In Botswana, 23% of the total area of country is under some form of conservation and protection either as game parks and forest reserves while in Malawi the 66 forest reserves and the national parks estates represent 20.6% of the land area. In South Africa, forest genetic resources are conserved in situ on 4.9% of the land area of South Africa. In Tanzania, in situ conservation of forest genetic resources is carried out on the forest reserves and national game parks, which covers 15% of the land area. There area under forest reserves, national parks and game reserves represents almost 19% of the land area of Zambia. Within each of the forest reserves of Zambia are some 53 botanical reserves that were set up for purposes of biodiversity conservation and monitoring. In Zimbabwe, conservation of forest genetic resources was enhanced through the establishment of forest reserves, parks and wildlife estates, game reserves, wilderness areas, botanical gardens and reserves, sanctuaries, recreational parks and safari areas which cover some 15% of the land area.

In addition to reservation of forests in some SADC countries some tree species may also protected or reserved just like forests. When a tree species is protected or reserved, it means that the damage to and the felling, destruction or removal of any such tree without prior permission shall be prohibited and punishable. A new concept of managing reserved and unreserved forests by involving communities emerged in several SADC countries in the 1990s. The concept, called Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is at various stages of implementation in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Alden Wily and Mbaya, 2001).

9.2 Ex situ Conservation (field gene banks, seed gene banks)

In ex situ conservation, species’ populations are protected and managed outside their native or original environment either as seed gene banks or field gene banks. This approach is preferred in situations where the populations are in real danger of physical destruction or genetic deterioration due to excessive pressures in their natural habitat. All the SADC countries have operational tree seed centres some of which were established in the mid 1990s’ with financial assistance from the Canadian International Development agency (CIDA) and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). Besides, the procurement, collection and distribution of tree seed, these seed centres play a leading role in ex situ germplasm conservation of the forest tree seed. Ex situ conservation in form of field gene banks is practised for most exotic plantation species in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe while the provenance trials of some of the indigenous fruit tree species established in the different countries will have a dual purpose of provenance testing and as field gene banks once their experimental life is over. In Malawi, field gene banks of important seed sources of indigenous species (A. quanzensis, K. anthotheca, and P. angolensis) were established. There is also a regional gene bank (SADC Regional Gene Bank) located in Lusaka Zambia, which stores duplicate samples of germplasm of national institutions. Although is mandate is germplasm of all plants, its strength has been on agricultural crop species.