Environmental research

Context: The Selous-Niassa Miombo woodlands of Southern Tanzania and Northern Mozambique constitute one of the largest transboundary natural ecosystems in Africa with abundant globally significant biodiversity. The Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor also serves as a migratory route between the Selous and Niassa Game Reserve in Mozambique both of which host the world s largest populations of elephants, buffalo and sable antelopes. The corridor and the biological resources in it are under threat from land clearing for farming and settlements as well as poaching for local consumption and ivory for transboundary trade. There is also habitat degradation in the corridor due to uncontrolled and destructive wildfires caused by local communities. In 2008, GEF/SGP supported fisheries projects around the Corridor adjacent villages to produce an alternative source of protein to bush meat. Furthermore, fish production activity was chosen because it doubles as a source of protein and an income generation initiative. Therefore, this project builds on an earlier intervention on fish production project. In addition, farmers practicing fish farming from home-based fish ponds and Ruvuma river would be trained on how to dry fish by using more efficient improved fish drying kilns which use less woodfuel. Project s main Objective: To promote wider adoption of improved fish drying kilns with the view to reducing deforestation and forest degradation. Rationale: Present fish drying methods involve open racks. This method use between 2 to 5 kgs of firewood to dry a kilo of fish. Besides, it produces poorly non-uniformed colour on dried fish. The proposed method involves a modern chimney kiln called Altonner Kiln. It takes shorter time to dry fish and use 0.76 1kg of firewood to dry a kilo of fish. Besides, it produces good quality uniformly-dried fish with golden colour.

Tanzania