University of Kent

Bruno Nhancale

email: ban5

CV

PhD research entitled "Strengthening and mainstreaming the Maputaland systematic conservation planning system ".

The Maputaland centre of endemism is a region of approximately 17,000 km2 that lies within Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland. The region is a transitional zone between the central African tropics and Southern African temperate zones, so it supports plant and animal species from both tropics and the temperate coastal regions. It also contains a large number of endemic species and habitat types, such as sand forest and woody grasslands, that are unique to the region. The conservation importance of Maputaland is globally recognised, as it forms part of the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany biodiversity hotspot and contains the Greater St Lucia Wetland World Heritage Site.

This unique biodiversity is threatened by the spread of subsistence agriculture and over-harvesting, which are the product of the region’s nutrient-poor soils and high poverty levels. However, there a number of conservation initiatives in the region that aim to address these problems, such as the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI) and the Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area project. These projects aim to conserve biodiversity whilst creating employment opportunities by increasing eco-tourism, game ranching and commercial agriculture and creating a transnational protected area network.

These developments need to be guided by a transnational systematic conservation planning approach and such a system was developed as part of a previous DICE project in Maputaland. My project aims to further strengthen this planning system and will have the following aims:

• To incorporate data on minimum viable population size of key large mammal species into the Maputaland conservation assessment.
  
  
• To model the impact of plant and animal harvesting on the biodiversity of Maputaland and use the planning system to identify areas where important species are less affected by over-harvesting.
  
  
• To investigate the effects of including both freshwater and terrestrial conservation features in the Maputaland conservation assessment.
  
  
• To investigate the relevance of using the Maputaland conservation planning system to make fine scale land-use decisions. This research will focus on two communities that neighbour the Maputo Special Reserve in Mozambique.
  
  
• To investigate the interests of the different government sectors and NGOs working in Maputaland and identify opportunities for their involvement in implementing results from the Maputaland conservation assessment.
  

Funding
DICE, University of Kent
African Wildlife Foundation, Charlotte Fellowship

Further funding is needed to purchase necessary equipment