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Tanzania has a total area of about 94.5 million ha out of which 88.6 million ha is covered by land-
mass and the rest is inland water. Forests and woodlands in Tanzania cover about 34 million hec-
tares making about 40% of land. Gazetted forestland is about 13 million hectares, predominantly
managed by the Central Government. Only 600 000 hectares of the gazetted forest land are under
the ownership and management of Local Governments. Game reserves and national parks consti-
tute about 2 000 000 ha. Non gazetted forests in public lands cover about 19 million hectares and
this is where forests are facing serious conversion to competing land uses. Non gazetted forests
are also known as general land forests which are essentially open access. Deforestation in Tanza-
nia, which is estimated at between 130 000 to 500 000 hectares per annum occurs mostly in the
general land forests as well as degradation (loss of biomass) over much of the total forest area.
Establishment of village forest reserves under Participatory Forest Management (PFM) which
started in 1990s was found to retard deforestation in unreserved forestland. To date more than 3
million ha are under PFM (MNRT 2006) which is about 11% of total forest area. This reduces the
open access forest area in the general land from 19 million ha to about 16 million, which is 47%
of the entire forested land (Table 1). |
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