Research: Building capacity to monitor forest resources

Research summary

• January 2021 to July 2021

The project aimed to quantify forest resources and their use by local communities in two protected areas in Sierra Leone.

Manchester Met staff provided training to local scientists in monitoring and analysis, including to students from the University of Sierra Leone.

Plots were established in the core zones of Western Area Peninsula National Park and Kangari Hills Non-Hunting Reserve to assess how much carbon is stored in these forests. Other plots were set up close to villages bordering these protected areas to assess how much carbon is lost by degradation.

Focus groups were carried out with local communities to find out how they valued the forests, what resources they used and their perspectives of how the forests have changed.

Researchers also studied how these rural communities consumed and traded bushmeat - the meat of wild animals - and whether this reached urban communities in Freetown.

Key findings

• Intact forests store more than 150 tonnes of carbon per hectare in the wood of trees. If the forest becomes degraded - when trees have been cut for firewood, charcoal or as part of a land claim – up to half this carbon can be lost, depending on whether the larger trees were felled.

• Forests affected by mining store very little carbon, and had notably different tree species composition to intact forests or forests affected by other activities.

• Local communities value forests for the resources they provide, but also for their role in regulating the environment, supporting biodiversity and their intrinsic cultural value. The most valued ecosystem services vary between areas, reflecting the livelihoods of the villagers – for example, more villages identified forests as important sources of house-building materials in Kangari Hills than in the Western Area Peninsula.

• Most communities thought their neighbouring forest had reduced in size and become degraded. They believe increased enforcement of existing protected area regulations is the most likely intervention to stop the degradation.

• While few villages reported that bushmeat was an important component of their diet, consumption is high in urban areas. Nearly half the men interviewed in Freetown said they regularly consumed bushmeat. In contrast, nearly half of women interviewed said they never ate bushmeat.