Local Land-Use Planning
AWF began its landscape conservation work by supporting national parks. But wildlife is not confined to parks, so AWF took the next logical step — working with local communities near parks and other wildlife areas to help them manage their lands for conservation across broad landscapes.
Ultimately, AWF works to unite villages, parks and reserves in a vast, cohesive landscape — training local communities to work together to conserve wildlife and migration routes, all while protecting and advancing their own economic interests. AWF is pursuing this goal through a variety of efforts in the African Heartlands.
In Tanzania, AWF promotes Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) – agreements among local communities to define land-use and benefits-sharing. Through WMAs, leaders are authorized, action plans implemented, village game scouts trained, trustees appointed, and accountability ensured.
In the Kilimanjaro Heartland, AWF is working with Kenyan group ranches to develop land management strategies that will sustain crop farming, livestock husbandry and preservation of wildlife conservation areas. Through the land management meetings that have been held in all the seven group ranches in Amboseli area, the Kilimanjaro Heartland team and the group ranch committees developed a plan of action designed to maintain wildlife habitat connectivity in the Heartland while at the same help to sustain livelihood support husbandry. This participatory planning process and output oriented action is a milestone to conserving wildlife and landscape in general.
Development of participatory land-use plans is also underway in Tanzania’s Simanjiro District of the Maasai Steppe Heartland, the Kimana wetlands in the Kilimanjaro Heartland, and the Maringa Lopori Wamba Landscape in the Congo Heartland.
