Wandering Footsteps: Wandering the World One Step at a Time » A travel journal following a family on their overland trip around the world.

Tara Haskins - I savored every word—beautiful crescendo, dear! And hell yes, I love your justification for not climbing!ReplyCancel

Brittany - Dear Kirsi,
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on IBR and especially for responding in such detail. Your message showed me that, despite my criticism of the reserve, we are both fighting on the same side of the battle – a battle that is difficult to wage in Tanzania.
I must preface this response with the fact that I am far from perfect, environmentally-speaking. My husband and I try to reduce the number of kilometers we drive – walking or cycling whenever possible, and traveling slowly – but we still burn diesel. We filter our own water rather than using plastic bottles every day – but filters themselves are made of plastic. We never accept plastic bags in markets and supermarkets – but we still buy processed foods. So feel free to take the comments that follow with a grain of salt, as mere suggestions.
I think our main disagreement is about how to use the wood from the invasive alien trees that IBR is systematically killing off. I am aware of the difference between indigenous vs. non-indigenous, and invasive vs. non-invasive flora, having volunteered with the Lake County Forest Preserves (in Illinois, USA) to remove alien invasive plants from their reserves.
I am glad that you mention the fact that, after you kill the invasive tree, you usually leave it standing. As a botanist, you know that not only birds, but insects and other living creatures depend upon these trees, and the soil benefits greatly from the gradual decomposition of the tree. Whenever possible, it is important to leave dead trees standing.
However, I am not naïve enough to think that we can leave all dead trees where they are. Everywhere around us are wood products, from our paper to our furniture. I am also aware that most poor Africans use wood for their cooking, and that this is something so deeply engrained in their traditions that it is difficult to change.
Though you didn’t specifically mention it in your message, I think you were alluding to the fact that the wood you use for hot showers and food production is from alien invasive trees (Question: How do you monitor this?). What I am suggesting is that, despite the fact that your carbon footprint might be positive and that the trees you use for this burning is a small percentage of your annual tree growth, it is not a good enough reason to burn wood, even if it’s invasive.
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Kirsi Salo - Dear Brittany,

I read your blog about Irente biodiversity Reserve with interest and I feel I am obliged to respond to it since I am the manager of the reserve, a professional botanist and you have charged us with being unfriendly to Mother Nature,
Your main bone of contention is that Irente Biodiversity Reserve (the old name of farm has fallen away) uses firewood for heating water, heating milk and heating fruit to make and jam and juice.

I quite agree with you that in some instances it’s not good to use wood, and if we had been a camp in the Serengeti, Ruaha or the Selous and we were burning wood this would not be so good, because these would be indigenous hardwoods.

But let me explain the difference between trees. Not all trees are the same. In Tanzania you can divide them in 3 groups:
• Indigenous –provide an ecosystem for wildlife (684 species and subspecies in the Usambaras)
• Alien – from other countries, planted for commerce, timber, firewood eg. Grevillea. Non invasive
• Invasive aliens – foreign trees that out-compete indigenous ones thereby reducing biodiversity. Eg. Guava, Acrocarpus, wattle, jacaranda, lantana

At IBR we have 200 hectares. Most of this covered with alien trees like wattle, pine, japanese camphor, grevillea and eucalyptus. We have replanted about 20 ha indigenous trees (local to the West Usambaras)
Our policy is to plant only indigenous trees from now on and to remove the aliens. We kill the alien trees in the areas where we don´t want them by ring-barking. Then we leave the dead tree standing because many birds and animals are dependent on dead wood. (There are about 20 bird species that nest in holes in soft wood).

Recently I talked to government officials and NGO.s in the Lushoto district, because on Environment Day they were planting masses of trees and the boasting that this was “helping the environment or biodiversity” as some of them said. Unfortunately, many of the species they were planting were invasive aliens like Leucena and Spanish cedar.
I tried to talk them into planting indigenous species rather, for the sake of nature conservation, sressing Mvule (Milicea excels) and Mkangazi (Khaya nyasica). It gave results.

We recently applied for accreditation as a Sustainable Tourism venue. The inspectors criticized us for the exactly the same question; you see they couldn´t see the bigger picture, just like you! After explaining to them, they passed our energy policy.

The big picture in this:
 We have 200 hectares, with a lot of trees (mostly alien unfortunately)
 The few trees that we do harvest for burning is a tiny percent of the total annual growth. Therefore our carbon footprint is more than positive! The means the amount of carbon IBR captures far exceeds the amount of carbon produced by IBR.
 That said, we would like to reduce carbon emissions further, and we have introduced solar lighting, recentlywe put in 2 “kuni boilers” of Kenyan design that consume only a little wood.

Of course we would like to get solar fridges and solar water heating but this is rather expensive and our income just not enough – as we are not an establishment catering to the rich mzungus as you put it. Our rates are rather reasonable and our end of year profit (after all taxes to district and government) is rather low.
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