Seeds of Change in a Biodiversity Hotspot

Home to species like the African violets that bloom in living rooms around the world, the Eastern Arc Mountains often evoke the nickname “Galapagos of Africa.” These mountains rise up from grassland and woodland in Tanzania and Kenya, existing as “mountain rainforest islands” isolated for over 30 million years.

Their isolation made them ancient centers for speciation — the evolution of new species — and the number of different endemic species makes the mountains one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.

Yet today, African forests experience some of the fastest deforestation rates on the planet. In the Eastern Arc Mountains, about 80% of the original forest cover has been decimated, with some mountains more severely impacted than others. After hundreds of years of colonial extraction, deforestation is now fueled by local agriculture: Subsistence farmers remove the forest for land, and timber harvesting is an important source of revenue.

Through a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, host Dr. Henry Ndangalasi and Roosevelt University professor Norbert Cordeiro plan to write a book that will be an essential resource in the efforts to conserve the Eastern Arc Forests.

The Carnegie fellowship is a prestigious program for African institutions to host an African-born scholar. It develops fruitful, sustainable partnerships between universities and reverses the brain drain of scholars emigrating from Africa. Ndangalasi and Cordeiro’s project was one of about 50 selected this year for the competitive scholarship.

The two will be working on a book about Afromontane seedling and tree identification. Their goal is to better understand natural forest regeneration, collecting and collating the knowledge that local conservation groups need to restore tropical forests.

Deforestation and climate change

Cordeiro has spent the greater part of the last 27 years studying ecology and conservation in the East Usambara Mountains. He says that his time spent studying this unique ecosystem is a “tiny snapshot” in the history of the mountains. Even in that relatively short span, he’s seen the impact of climate change.

“Already working in this particular study area, we’ve seen a one-degree increase in temperature,” said Cordeiro.” And that’s not Fahrenheit, that’s Celsius.”

In Tanzania, like in countries around the world, climate change threatens the most vulnerable populations. Temperature rises could lead to more flooding and droughts, threatening food security and agricultural production, which employs more than half of the country’s population.

The global carbon cycle depends on healthy forests. One 2019 study in Science found that planting half a billion trees could negate about 20 years of human carbon emissions, an important step in slowing climate change.

Climate change is one major reason that other countries and NGOs have launched enormous efforts to reverse deforestation. The Trillion Trees Project hopes to have one trillion trees re-grown and better protected by 2050. Ethiopia alone pledged to plant five billion trees last year, according to Quartz Africa.

But not enough research has been done in Afromontane forests to know what native tree species to use and how to use them when it comes to reforestation. What information is available is scattered, incomplete and inaccessible to those working on restoration and protection efforts.

What caused deforestation in the East Usambara Mountains

Forest regeneration isn’t a simple project of planting thousands of seedlings in abandoned farmland. It’s a complex, careful undertaking that requires understanding decades of changes caused by colonialism and poverty.

During their colonial rule, the Germans and then the British removed portions of natural forests in favor of coffee and tea plantations, respectively, demolishing over a third of the original forest cover in the East Usambara Mountains.

Many years after independence, in the 1980s, the Finnish International Development Agency sponsored a project to harvest native trees for the timber industry. The unsustainable practice of cutting down centuries- and even millennia-old trees led to further destruction of this unique forest. International and Tanzanian outcry stopped the project by 1990.

Deforestation for colonial cash crops like tea and post-independence timber extraction has left a legacy of disturbed forest. Today, encroachment from subsistence farmers and illegal timber harvest continues to threaten this precious rainforest.

Ndangalasi and Cordeiro have used this fragmented forest-agricultural landscape as an area for applied conservation research. The researchers identified that hornbills and fruit bats have found their own use for the “legacy trees” leftover from colonial farmers who planted them for shade on tea plantations. The large birds and mammals use the isolated trees to feed in or perch on as they flit from one forest patch to another in the tea-forest mosaic.

Many Roosevelt students worked with the two researchers on a study evaluating the role of legacy trees, including recent graduates Tesakiah Harjo, Rebecca Wilson and Clayton Pedigo. They found that numerous native forest tree seeds arrive under these legacy trees, many brought by large birds and some by fruit bats. Their findings will be crucial for the East Usambaras (and Ndangalasi and Cordeiro’s book).

The researchers identified several key easy-to-plant tree species with a high potential for successful forest restoration. Seed dispersal by bats and birds also provides a passive way for the animals to do the work of replanting native species. From a cost perspective, this discovery is hugely promising in poor nations like Tanzania.

Ndangalasi and Cordeiro have also been working on research comparing 20-year-old data to current data to understand if the forests became more homogeneous over time. Accelerating human disturbance, coupled with climate change, is likely to alter the composition of these forests. They hope to explore the possibility of connecting the patches of fragmented forest with corridors to further encourage the movement of animals and plants.

Cordeiro is also an associate researcher at the Field Museum, one of the largest natural history museums in the world — and conveniently located in Roosevelt’s backyard. Through the museum, students have gotten the opportunity to work with Cordeiro and his colleagues on a range of projects. Through his courses, students can understand and apply science with actual specimens from the museum. Students also build on their courses in conversation with the Field Museum’s renowned experts in evolution, biodiversity, and conservation.

One student, Zoey Bezilla (BS ’19), worked side by side with Cordeiro to study African bird species. “I had the opportunity for one-on-one feedback and was able to form a relationship I would not have had at a bigger school,” she said.

“We’ve done so much harm to nature, and yet, it rewards us and allows us to survive,” Cordeiro said. “We need to repair a lot of that damage. And it’s important to impart that to our students.”

A new project for longtime collaborators

The Carnegie fellowship host, Dr. Henry Ndangalasi, is one of the foremost working botanists in Africa. For decades, Ndangalasi has studied the phenology of plants in the East Usambara Mountains, the easternmost range of the Eastern Arc Mountains. He has also been involved in the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, which stores seeds as a prevention measure against future extinctions.

Cordeiro has worked with Ndangalasi for years. He describes him as very calm and peaceful, generous with his time and knowledge, someone who loves being in the forest and who uses his almost “supernatural” teaching skills to connect students with the plants around them.

Ndangalasi teaches at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania’s largest city. His classes average about 300 to 400 students, who often have to share microscopes during labs because of limited resources. The Carnegie fellowship is one way to share resources to African universities. A crucial part of the fellowship is mentoring graduate botany students. During the pandemic, Ndangalasi and Cordeiro are working hand-in-hand to develop a virtual program to support the students and researchers.

Supporting local conservationists

The new project, supported by the Carnegie fellowship, will create a practical handbook for conservationists tackling the interconnected forest restoration work in the Eastern Arc Mountains. For the foresters, villagers and resource managers already active in the mountains, the new book would be an essential tool for restoration.

Ndangalasi and Cordeiro have been working with communities in the Eastern Arc Mountains for many years. Groups in local villages have managed to protect patches of forest to preserve their rivers. Another conservation group, the Amani Friends of Nature, has worked for more than 15 years to protect endangered animal species and restore disturbed forests and abandoned land.

“By developing this book in both Swahili and English, we create an important tool for education for the University of Dar es Salaam students, for stakeholders involved in management and restoration of tropical forests, and general students of tropical biology,” Cordeiro said.

Teaching conservation to Roosevelt students

Professor Cordeiro usually travels to Tanzania twice a year to conduct research. Every other year, he brings students with him on a 14-day field course to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Conservation Area (both World Heritage sites) and to the Amani Nature Reserve in the Eastern Arc. While the trip was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, he hopes to return with his class in 2022.

During the course, students meet with Tanzanian experts and community members, immersing themselves in the ecology and conservation of savannah and rainforest ecosystems. This field course is built for students to gain a better appreciation of the complex work to conserve one of the world’s most important forests.

Many students have called the trip “life-changing.” Recent biology graduate Yoali Torres found the experience so inspiring that she memorialized it with a tattoo.

“The trip to Tanzania with Dr. Cordeiro and the rest of the Conservation Bio course will always be remembered as the trip of my lifetime,” Torres said. “I am forever grateful for the long-lasting impact it had on my life and I look forward to the day I can make a trip back there.”

The students, without knowing Swahili, find ways to communicate with Tanzanians through gestures. When the class says goodbye to the community in the rainforest, the community holds a traditional celebration with food and plenty of dancing — a little non-verbal way to share their happiness.

“Roosevelt’s social justice mission is so important to me,” said Cordeiro. “I know that when I take students to Tanzania that they can be ambassadors of the world because they’ve gotten to see a different experience, and also be immersed in the culture to understand it.”