PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #3: Plant Population Ecology. Presiding: N. Fetcher.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Hall of Ideas L&M.
Effects of commercial bark harvesting on Adansonia digitata(baobab) in the Save-Odzi Valley, Zimbabwe.
ROMERO, CLAUDIA 1, CAMPBELL, BRUCE2, 1 2
ABSTRACT- Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) contribute to the welfare of a large and diverse group of people in the tropics. Incomes derived from their trade provide economic buffers for poor people when crops fail. The NTFPs industry that flourished in Zimbabwe during the 1990s was associated with increasing poverty, drought, unemployment and demands of tourists for artisanal goods. Marketing of products made of baobab (Adansonia)bark, in particular, increased during the last decade and provided an important source of rural employment in the eastern part of the country. In an attempt to determine the impact of baobab bark harvesting on the resource, and to provide communities with information for devising management guidelines, we measured bark regeneration rates on trees experimentally harvested over a period of 4 years (
=0.60 cm/yr), determined baobab tree densities in the harvesting area of 3 villages (=8.4 trees/ha), and estimated bark harvesting intensity. Unlike most tree species, after baobab bark is peeled off it regenerates from the exposed xylem, not from the edges of the exposed vascular cambium. Nevertheless, based on our data we concluded that current harvesting practices will deplete the resource in about 8 years. This dismal scenario will be exacerbated if the "sooty" baobab disease, produced by a fungus (Antenulariella type), continues spreading, and preferentially attacks harvested trees.
KEY WORDS: bark, Adansonia, sustainable, harvest