Area-based conservation is a widely used approach for maintaining biodiversity, and there are ongoing discussions over what is an appropriate global conservation area coverage target. To inform such debates, it is necessary to know the extent and ecological representativeness of the current conservation area network, but this is hampered by gaps in existing global datasets. In particular, although data on privately and community-governed protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures are often available at the national level, it can take many years to incorporate these into official datasets. This suggests a complementary approach is needed based on selecting a sample of countries and using their national-scale datasets to produce more accurate metrics. However, every country added to the sample increases the costs of data collection, collation and analysis. To address this, here we present a data collection framework underpinned by a spatial prioritization algorithm, which identifies a minimum set of countries that are also representative of 10 factors that influence conservation area establishment and biodiversity patterns. We then illustrate this approach by identifying a representative set of sampling units that cover 10% of the terrestrial realm, which included areas in only 25 countries. In contrast, selecting 10% of the terrestrial realm at random included areas across a mean of 162 countries. These sampling units could be the focus of future data collation on different types of conservation area. Analysing these data could produce more rapid and accurate estimates of global conservation area coverage and ecological representativeness, complementing existing international reporting systems.

The USA is the largest consumer of legally, internationally-traded wildlife. A proportion of this trade consists of species listed in the Appendices of CITES, and recorded in the CITES Trade Database. Using this resource, we quantified wildlife entering the USA for 82 of the most frequently recorded wildlife products and a range of taxonomic groups during 1979–2014. We examined trends in legal trade and seizures of illegally traded items over time, and relationships between trade and four national measures of biodiversity. We found that: (1) there is an overall positive relationship between legal imports and seizures; (2) Asia was the main region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products to the USA; (3) bears, crocodilians and other mammals (i.e. other than Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhinocerotidae) increased in both reported legal trade and seizures over time; (4) legal trade in live specimens was reported to be primarily from captive-produced, artificially-propagated or ranched sources, whereas traded meat was primarily wild sourced; (5) both seizures and legally traded items of felids and elephants decreased over time; and (6) volumes of both legally traded and seized species were correlated with four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism, species richness, number of IUCN threatened species, and country size. The goal of our analysis was to inform CITES decision-making and species conservation efforts.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus the conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) requires information on land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) and carbon emission trends from the past to the present and into the future. Here, we use the results of participatory scenario development in Tanzania to assess the potential interacting impacts on carbon stock, biodiversity and water yield of alternative scenarios where REDD+ is or is not effectively implemented by 2025, a green economy (GE) scenario and a business as usual (BAU) scenario, respectively. Under the BAU scenario, LULCCs will cause 296 million tonnes of carbon (MtC) national stock loss by 2025, reduce the extent of suitable habitats for endemic and rare species (mainly in encroached protected mountain forests) and change water yields. In the GE scenario, national stock loss decreases to 133 MtC. In this scenario, consistent LULCC impacts occur within small forest patches with high carbon density, water catchment capacity and biodiversity richness. Opportunities for maximizing carbon emission reductions nationally are largely related to sustainable woodland management, but also contain trade-offs with biodiversity conservation and changes in water availability.

We present an analysis of changes of state, pressures and conservation responses over 20 years in the Tanzanian portion of the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa biodiversity hotspot. Baseline data collected during 1989–1995 are compared with data from a synthesis of recently published papers and reports and new field work carried out across the region during 2010–2014. We show that biodiversity endemism values are largely unchanged, although two new species (amphibian and mammal) have been named and two extremely rare tree species have been relocated. However, forest habitat continues to be lost and degraded, largely as a result of agricultural expansion, charcoal production to supply cities with cooking fuel, logging for timber and cutting of wood for firewood and building poles. Habitat loss is linked to an increase in the number of species threatened over time. The government-managed forest reserve network has expanded slightly but has low effectiveness. Three forest reserves have been upgraded to National Parks and Nature Reserves, which have stricter protection and more effective enforcement. There has also been rapid development of village-owned forest reserves, with more than 140 now existing; although usually small, they are an important addition to the areas being managed for sustainable resource use, and also provide tangible benefits to local people. Human-use pressures remain intense in many areas, and combined with emerging pressures from mining, gas and oil exploration, many endemic species remain threatened with extinction.

Bushmeat hunting is a pantropical threat to rainforest mammals. Understanding its effects on species richness, community composition and population abundance is of critical conservation relevance. As data on the pre-hunting state of mammal populations in Africa are not generally available, we evaluated the impacts of illegal bushmeat hunting on the mammal community of two ecologically similar forests in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. The forests differ only in their protection status: one is a National Park and the other a Forest Reserve. We deployed systematic camera trap surveys in these forests, amounting to 850 and 917 camera days in the Forest Reserve and the National Park, respectively, and investigated differences between the two areas in estimated species-specific occupancies, detectabilities and species richness. We show that the mammal community in the Forest Reserve is degraded in all aspects relative to the National Park. Species richness was almost 40% lower in the Forest Reserve (median 18 vs 29 species, highest posterior density intervals 15–30 and 23–47, respectively). Occupancy of most species was also reduced significantly and the functional community appeared significantly altered, with an increase in rodents, and loss of large carnivores and omnivores. Overall, our results show how ineffective reserve management, with almost absent law enforcement, leads to uncontrolled illegal hunting, which in turn has a significant impact on the mammal fauna of globally important sites for conservation.

Nearly 10% of the world's total forest area is formally owned by communities and indigenous groups, yet knowledge of the effects of decentralized forest management approaches on conservation (and livelihood) impacts remains elusive. In this paper, the conservation impact of decentralized forest management on two forests in Tanzania was evaluated using a mixed method approach. Current forest condition, forest increment and forest use patterns were assessed through forest inventories, and changes in forest disturbance levels before and after the implementation of decentralized forest management were assessed on the basis of analyses of Landsat images. This biophysical evidence was then linked to changes in actual management practices, assessed through records, interviews and participatory observations, to provide a measure of the conservation impact of the policy change. Both forests in the study were found to be in good condition, and extraction was lower than overall forest increment. Divergent changes in forest disturbance levels were in evidence following the implementation of decentralized forest management. The evidence from records, interviews and participatory observations indicated that decentralized management had led to increased control of forest use and the observed divergence in forest disturbance levels appeared to be linked to differences in the way that village-level forest managers prioritized conservation objectives and forest-based livelihood strategies. The study illustrates that a mixed methods approach comprises a valid and promising way to evaluate impacts of conservation policies, even in the absence of control sites. By carefully linking policy outcomes to policy outputs, such an approach not only identifies whether such policies work as intended, but also potential mechanisms.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species uses geographical distribution as a key criterion in assessing the conservation status of species. Accurate knowledge of a species’ distribution is therefore essential to ensure the correct categorization is applied. Here we compare the geographical distribution of 35 species of chameleons endemic to East Africa, using data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and data compiled by a taxonomic expert. Data screening showed 99.9% of GBIF records used outdated taxonomy and 20% had no locality coordinates. Conversely the expert dataset used 100% up-to-date taxonomy and only seven records (3%) had no coordinates. Both datasets were used to generate range maps for each species, which were then used in preliminary Red List categorization. There was disparity in the categories of 10 species, with eight being assigned a lower threat category based on GBIF data compared with expert data, and the other two assigned a higher category. Our results suggest that before conducting desktop assessments of the threatened status of species, aggregated museum locality data should be vetted against current taxonomy and localities should be verified. We conclude that available online databases are not an adequate substitute for taxonomic experts in assessing the threatened status of species and that Red List assessments may be compromised unless this extra step of verification is carried out.

Sustaining the regular flow of water from mountain forests is important for downstream stakeholders in seasonally dry tropical countries, and a watershed payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme that links rural ecosystem service providers to urban water users through economic transfers may help to maintain water supply and forest habitat. A CARE/WWF project in the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania has established a pilot watershed PES scheme. We trace the development of this scheme and outline its initial impacts. Memoranda of Understanding between companies in Dar es Salaam (the downstream water users) and farmers in the mountains provide the framework to deliver tangible financial benefits to local people, help change patterns of land use and potentially improve water quality. A number of lessons learned from this project are relevant for similar schemes elsewhere in the region. Overcoming the various challenges is essential for expanding the current pilot project to a scale where it delivers measurable changes in water quality for downstream users.

Conversion of forest to other land uses is a major contributor to climate change. The coastal forests of Tanzania have increasingly been recognized as being of global biodiversity importance, due to high rates of species endemism. Rates of forest loss are similar to those of other tropical regions, resulting in increasing levels of threat for the biological values within the remaining forest and potentially significant source of CO2 emissions. This study estimated the remaining cover and carbon stock of Tanzania's coastal forests and the CO2 emissions due to forest loss between c. 1990 and c. 2007. Coastal Tanzania contained over 273 700 ha of forest in 2007. Deforestation rates in the area have slowed from 1.0% yr−1, or > 3735 ha yr−1 during the 1990s, to 0.4% yr−1, or > 1233 ha yr−1 during 2000–2007. Despite lower deforestation rates in 2000–2007, the percentage forest lost from within reserved areas has remained steady at 0.2% yr−1 for both time periods. CO2 emissions from deforestation slowed from at least 0.63 Mt CO2 yr−1 in 1990–2000 to at least 0.20 Mt CO2 yr−1 in 2000–2007. Regional forest clearance in Tanzania is highly dynamic; while rates have slowed since 2000, forest habitat conversion has continued and there is no guarantee that future rates will remain low. A rigorous policy on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) should be implemented to avoid future increases in deforestation rates.

Ecological regions aggregate habitats with similar biophysical characteristics within well-defined boundaries, providing spatially consistent platforms for monitoring, managing and forecasting the health of interrelated ecosystems. A major obstacle to the implementation of this approach is imprecise and inconsistent boundary placement. For globally important mountain regions such as the Eastern Arc (Tanzania and Kenya), where qualitative definitions of biophysical affinity are well established, rule-based methods for landform classification provide a straightforward solution to ambiguities in region extent. The method presented in this paper encompasses the majority of both contemporary and estimated preclearance forest cover within strict topographical limits. Many of the species here tentatively considered ‘near-endemic’ could be reclassified as strictly endemic according to the derived boundaries. LandScan and census data show population density inside the ecoregion to be higher than in rural lowlands, and lowland settlement to be most probable within 30 km. This definition should help to align landscape scale conservation strategies in the Eastern Arc and promote new research in areas of predicted, but as yet undocumented, biological importance. Similar methods could work well in other regions where mountain extent is poorly resolved. Spatial data accompany the online version of this article.

The proposed mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offers significant potential for conserving forests to reduce negative impacts of climate change. Tanzania is one of nine pilot countries for the United Nations REDD Programme, receives significant funding from the Norwegian, Finnish and German governments and is a participant in the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. In combination, these interventions aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, provide an income to rural communities and conserve biodiversity. The establishment of the UN-REDD Programme in Tanzania illustrates real-world challenges in a developing country. These include currently inadequate baseline forestry data sets (needed to calculate reference emission levels), inadequate government capacity and insufficient experience of implementing REDD+-type measures at operational levels. Additionally, for REDD+ to succeed, current users of forest resources must adopt new practices, including the equitable sharing of benefits that accrue from REDD+ implementation. These challenges are being addressed by combined donor support to implement a national forest inventory, remote sensing of forest cover, enhanced capacity for measuring, reporting and verification, and pilot projects to test REDD+ implementation linked to the existing Participatory Forest Management Programme. Our conclusion is that even in a country with considerable donor support, progressive forest policies, laws and regulations, an extensive network of managed forests and increasingly developed locally-based forest management approaches, implementing REDD+ presents many challenges. These are being met by coordinated, genuine partnerships between government, non-government and community-based agencies.

Forest loss and degradation in the tropics contribute 6–17% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Protected areas cover 217.2 million ha (19.6%) of the world’s humid tropical forests and contain c. 70.3 petagrams of carbon (Pg C) in biomass and soil to 1 m depth. Between 2000 and 2005, we estimate that 1.75 million ha of forest were lost from protected areas in humid tropical forests, causing the emission of 0.25–0.33 Pg C. Protected areas lost about half as much carbon as the same area of unprotected forest. We estimate that the reduction of these carbon emissions from ongoing deforestation in protected sites in humid tropical forests could be valued at USD 6,200–7,400 million depending on the land use after clearance. This is > 1.5 times the estimated spending on protected area management in these regions. Improving management of protected areas to retain forest cover better may be an important, although certainly not sufficient, component of an overall strategy for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).

The protected area network of Africa has grown from nothing to over 2 million km2 in the past 110 years. This network covers parts of all biomes and priority areas for biodiversity conservation but protected area gaps remain, as identified at the 5th World Parks Congress in 2003. Forest reserves, managed by Forest Departments, are typically excluded from global protected area lists, but in Africa they are found in 23 countries and cover at least 549,788 km2, adding 25% to the conservation estate. Forest reserves protect 5.3% (2,027 km2) of the dry forest habitats, 5% (165,285 km2) of lowland and montane moist forests, 2.6% (364,354 km2) of savannah woodlands, 1.8% (10,561 km2) of flooded grasslands, and 1.65% (1,177 km2) of mangroves. Forest reserves also protect parts of three conservation schemes: 6.5% (61,630 km2) of BirdLife's Endemic Bird Areas, 3.4% (147,718 km2) of Conservation International's Hotpots and 3.4% (346,864 km2) of WWF's Global 200 Ecoregions. Several of the global protected area gaps identified in Africa are also covered by forest reserves, in the Eastern Arc Mountains, Eastern African coastal forests, Kenyan Highlands, Cameroon-Nigerian Mountains, West African Forests and mountain areas of Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia. Some African forest reserves have a legally defined role in biodiversity conservation and are strictly protected; they thus fit criteria for protected areas. Working with forest departments in individual countries may help develop a more comprehensive protected area network without creating additional new reserves.

The Eastern Arc Mountains of East Africa are known for an exceptionally rich flora and fauna with very high endemism. For the conservation of rare forest birds these mountains are of the utmost importance in Africa. We provide the first population estimate of the endemic Loveridge's Sunbird Nectarinia loveridgei in the Uluguru Mountains of eastern Tanzania. Our study was conducted between September and December 2000. Capture-recapture using mistnets was used to gather data at eleven study sites between 1,300–2,600 m altitude in four different areas of the Ulugurus. The program CAPTURE was used to estimate the population at each study site. Since the home range of Loveridge's Sunbird is unknown, the density of the potential population was calculated by assuming home ranges ranging from 0 km2 through to 3 km2. When combined with data on the forest area in the Ulugurus and fixing the lower and upper home range sizes for this species at 0.1 km2 and 0.8 km2, we obtain an estimated total population ranging from 21,000 to 166,000 individuals. A median home range of 0.45 km2 estimates the population close to 37,000 individuals. The species does not seem threatened but its long-term survival will depend on the survival of the forest, and in particular on how well the forest reserves on the Ulugurus are managed in the future.

The establishment of protected areas for wildlife conservation in Africa was motivated by a number of different reasons (including hunting, recreation and wildlife conservation). The current reserve network provides good coverage of the distributions of the 194 species of larger mammals (>3 kg) and 51 species of threatened larger mammals. However, it is less effective in covering the distribution of all 197 of Africa's threatened mammal species, which includes >140 smaller bodied species (<3 kg) often restricted to habitat patches. A fully comprehensive network of areas for the conservation of African mammals, especially those facing extinction, is not yet in place, and further reserves may be needed in the Horn of Africa (Somalia in particular), the Cameroon Highlands, parts of the eastern African coastal forests and Eastern Arc Mountains, and parts of the Albertine Rift Mountains. More and larger reserve areas are also required to adequately cover all the species of South Africa. Parts of these gaps are already covered by government forest reserves, and the importance of this reserve category for the conservation of African mammals, especially threatened species, needs to be better recognized. As many of the gaps in reserve coverage are in areas of high human population and good agricultural potential, conservation goals may be difficult to achieve unless we supplement traditional reserves with novel approaches to maintain natural habitats and wildlife outside reserves.

Geographical patterns and peaks of species richness and narrow endemism (defined by range-restrictedness and range-size rarity) are described for terrestrial Afrotropical birds and subsets thereof based on residency, endemism, and taxonomy. Species richness for residents and Afrotropical endemics (species globally restricted to sub-Saharan Africa) peaks along the mountains and adjacent lowlands of eastern and southern Africa. Isolated mountains in central and western Africa and the lowlands of the north-eastern Congo Basin (Ituri) are highlighted to a lesser degree. Peaks of narrow endemism occur in these areas as well as in the Ethiopian Highlands (particularly for non-passerines), Somalia (particularly for passerines), and the Angolan Escarpment. Within residents, patterns of species richness vary greatly between Afrotropical endemics (which concentrate in forests on mountains and adjacent lowlands, and the southern Brachystegia woodlands) and non-endemic residents (which concentrate in Sudanian woodlands and the Ethiopian Highlands). Patterns of species richness of residents (species that breed in the Afrotropics) and non-breeding migrants (non-breeding visitors to the Afrotropics) also show notable differences. The latter concentrate in areas close to the Palaearctic, which forms their distributional range centres. Patterns of species richness and narrow endemism for Afrotropical endemics show broad-scale coincidence within mountains or mountain–lowland complexes, particularly the Cameroon–Bamenda Highland system, East African rift system and Eastern Arc mountains. However, fine-scale coincidence of peaks of species richness and narrow endemism within these complexes is low. Narrow endemism peaks occur in areas of topographical complexity, which may have conferred localized climatic stability over short-, medium-, and long-term climatic cycles (sensu Fjeldså, 1994; Fjeldså et al., 1997), allowing these areas to act as ‘species pumps’. Species accumulate in areas of high productivity. Lack of fine-scale coincidence of narrow endemism and species richness peaks have implications for conservation prioritization exercises.

More biodiversity could be protected in situ if the few species that attract the most popular support (the ‘flagship’ species) had distributions that also covered the broader diversity of organisms. We studied how well different groups of mammals performed for representing the diversity of mammals and breeding birds among 1° areas of sub-Saharan Africa. We demonstrate that choosing areas of sub-Saharan Africa using either conservationists' six primary flagship mammals, or the six ‘Big Five’ mammals popular with wildlife tourists, is not significantly better for representing the diversity of mammals and birds than choosing areas at random. Furthermore, neither of these groups is significantly better for representing the diversity of mammals and birds than groups of the same number of species chosen at random. We show that in order to succeed in representing many mammals and birds in area selection, it is not sufficient for the groups used for selection to occur in many different eco-regions, they must also have low overlaps in distribution, so as to provide high ecological complementarity (a similar pattern of ecological complementarity must be shared by the larger group of species to be represented). Therefore there may be a need for an explicit policy to balance the requirements of flagship conservation and broader biodiversity conservation, which will have implications for the distribution of resources.

This paper presents the current results of a continuing survey of the distribution, status and biological importance of Tanzanian coastal forests. The Frontier-Tanzania Coastal Forest Research Programme has shown that at least 34 locations, and possibly another eight, support important coastal forests. There are probably 350–500 sq km of forest remaining, with most sites smaller than 20 sq km. Most sites, and 75–85 per cent of the total area, are located in Forest Reserves. Coastal forest supports many endemic taxa and many individual forests support species and subspecies known from nowhere else. All these forests are severely threatened and effective conservation action is a priority. The Frontier-Tanzania project findings are contributing to conservation programmes co-ordinated by the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania and the World Wide Fund for Nature (Tanzania).