Goat rearing helps villagers fight poverty.

Deep in a hilly village of Itonya lives a man called Yoram Mienda. His village is within Kilolo district, and is located nearly 100 kms from Iringa municipality.

At 65, Mienda was used to small-scale farming, growing traditional cereals to feed his family. However, his farming activities were not enough to make him live a decent life because of low productivity. In a nutshell, farming didn’t give Mienda enough income to meet daily needs.

Worse enough, people in the area had stopped growing tea and coffee decades ago, putting most of them in a tight angle, when it came to getting money. Mienda and his colleagues in the village had to find other means of getting a livelihood. One of the options was for them to get into the forest for small wild animals for food and sometimes for timber.

They also collaborated with some businessmen who needed hardwood timber from the Udzungwa forest reserve. They risked getting into the forest for cash. All those activities posed serious threat to the forest as sometimes hunting small wild animals involves fire, which is one of the serious concerns in forest conservation. Illegal logging for whatever reasons is not allowed in the forest reserve.

Right now, things have changed in Itonya village as Mienda and some villagers who used to illegally get into the forest are good ambassadors of forest conservation.

Most of the over 3,000 people in the village are very positive with the idea of participatory forest management. This is so due to the introduction of an environmentally friendly project in the village. Dairy goat rearing project has changed people’s livelihoods in the area. Mienda is one of the beneficiaries in the project that was designed to give people income generating activities. He is now busy with his goats, which give him money on a daily basis from milk sales.

The idea, which was hatched and financed by the Eastern Arc Mountains Conservation Endowment Fund (EAMCEF), was meant to reduce pressure on forest resources.

Recounting, where he started, Mienda says: “It was like a dream when my name was mentioned as among the beneficiaries of the dairy goat rearing project. My name was mentioned at the village meeting where 18 people were picked to get into this project three years ago.”

Before getting one of the improved dairy goats, Mienda and his colleagues, had to undergo some theoretical and practical training on how to operate the project.

“Many of us had no knowledge on how to take care of goats…this is a new phenomenon in this area. We thank EAMCEF and other experts for making this idea possible,” he says, as he takes his goats to the pastures.

In Itonya village, 18 people benefited from the project, whereby each beneficiary got one goat. Since 2009, Mienda has many goats generated from the project and now is assured of getting money from selling milk.

He gets 10 litres of goat milk a day. And one litre is sold at 1,000/-. So, everyday Maenda gets 10,000/-, an amount which is enough to make him live a better and happier life.

The arrangement of this project, when one gets one goat he/she is supposed to give one male goat child to another villager who wasn’t part of the first batch of the project.

“The idea is to make sure that the project spreads to all the villagers living around the forest reserve,” says Benson Mgeni, coordinator of the Dairy Goat Project.

He says there is a very close link between goat rearing and forest conservation.

“Here people get animal protein from goats. They also use goat’s waste to fertilize their farms and increase production per acreage,” he says, adding that the move also slows down pressure to the forest reserve.

Since 2009, when the project kick-started in the five villages, which are adjacent to the Udzungwa forest reserve there today are more than 140 goats.

“We started with just 60 goats, which were given to the first batch of the beneficiaries, but now many people are in this project,” says Mgeni, who is the Kilolo District Livestock Officer.

“To us, this is a success story when it comes to forest conservation as people will be concentrating on the projects than encroaching the forest…we appeal to people to adopt the idea,” says Francis Sabuni, the EAMCEF Executive Director.

He asserts that his fund has been enhancing understanding on the linkages between socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation through binding implementation arrangements among project beneficiaries.

“We have helped villagers get alternative income sources in addition to forests…Itonya is one of the villages in Kilolo district, which have benefited from the support by the fund,” says Sabuni.

He says dairy goat keeping is one of the many projects introduced to communities in a bid to reduce people’s reliance on natural forests.

It is estimated that since 2009, more than 250 dairy goats and 1,000 improved chickens have been disbursed to villagers across areas which are close to Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains .

“This is why the fund is asking for more financial support from environmental partners to make its endeavors achieve its desired missions,” Sabuni says.

He notes that the responsibility of controlling depletion of the country's largest forest if for all people who live on planet earth.

Last year Norway signed an agreement with the fund worth 9bn/-, which enables EAMCEF implement a five-year project in the five mountainous region forests which currently face an annual depletion rate of 0.1 per cent due to human activities, such as uncontrolled fire, conversion of natural habitats to agriculture and illegal logging.

Other challenges include unsustainable collection of firewood and building materials, and inappropriate mining activities.

Eastern Arc Mountains plays an imperative role for the livelihood of Tanzanians in different ways, as it acts as water sources for irrigation, power, industrial and domestic use for cities and urban centers located in the central and eastern part of Tanzania.

“Irrigation schemes in coastal regions including Morogoro, Tanga and Kilimanjaro depend on water flowing from these mountains. That’s why we want the entire ecosystem to be conserved and it will be sustainably conserved if communities living along those areas are empowered in different ways,” Sabuni says.