Conservation of Afro-montane Forest & Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context “Life of Project” Performance Evaluation. July 15th to August 11th 2005 Prepared by: James Acworth (Team Leader) and Anthony Ratter (Technical Reviewer) With support of AWF/IGCP Partners. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 ii Inside Front cover Some quotes from the original BINP Tourism Development Plan (IGCP, 1992): Guiding Principle No.1: “Tourism activity must support conservation, not be an end in itself, and be sustainable in the sense that it does not act to disturb, or destroy the very attractions it is based upon.” Tourism Objective: “To allow and manage sustainable tourism in the National Park(s) which is of low environmental impact, of benefit to the communities and economically viable in a national context and which shall thereby ultimately serve to support biodiversity conservation.” Some quotes from the project Application: Overall Hypothesis: “When managed and conserved as an ecologically and economically vibrant conservation landscape, the GVL can contribute substantially to the alleviation of poverty and the provision of sustainable livelihoods for rural people in SW Uganda.” “Increasing threats to forest and gorillas are originating in the surrounding landscape” “Landscape level conservation programs are designed to intervene at the most effective possible level: large enough to address some of the root causes but local enough to be within the manageable interests of stakeholders in the region” “The vision of financially independent and self-sustaining African Wildlife Authorities is critical to the future survival and well-being of Africa’s wildlife populations.” “As long as community involvement and benefit flows remain at current levels, the mountain gorillas and their habitat will continue to be viewed as belonging to someone else – those who more successfully capture the value associated with mountain gorilla tourism.” AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 iii Table of Contents 1 Project/Activity Summary ..................................................................................................................1 2 Recommendations .................................................................................................................................3 3 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................................8 4 Evaluation Approach and Methods.................................................................................................. 10 4.1 The Team ..................................................................................................................................... 10 4.2 Method ......................................................................................................................................... 10 5 Project Design & Implementation................................................................................................... 12 5.1 Validity of intervention logic................................................................................................... 12 5.2 Critical assumptions and Risks................................................................................................ 14 5.3 Appropriateness of Monitoring Plan...................................................................................... 15 5.4 Project Implementation ........................................................................................................... 16 6 Achievement of Intermediate Results..........................................................................................20 6.1 The Heartland Conservation Planning Process (IR1)..........................................................20 6.2 Key Strategies for Threat Abatement Implemented (IR2)............................................26 6.3 Regional Frameworks Strengthened (IR3) .......................................................................... 31 6.4 National and Regional Policy improved (IR4).......................................................................32 6.5 PAs serving as ecological & economic core areas of the Landscape (IR5)...................36 6.5.1 Priority Actions of Bwindi and Mgahinga GMPs implemented (IR5.1)...................................... 37 6.5.2 UWA management decisions strengthened by monitoring and research (IR5.2)................. 40 6.6 Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in the GVL (IR6).................43 6.6.1 Opportunities for CBVs identified and developed (IR6.1)......................................................... 44 6.6.2 GVL products and services effectively linked to regional and international markets......... 59 7 Impact – Purpose and Goal Level.....................................................................................................60 7.1 Review of Purpose level indicators.........................................................................................60 7.1.1 Reduction on key threats - Indicator (a)....................................................................................... 60 7.1.2 Reduction in illegal activities - Indicator (b) ................................................................................ 60 7.1.3 Positive threats reduction analysis - Indicator (c)...................................................................... 62 7.2 Review of Goal level indicators...............................................................................................62 7.2.1 Natural Forest Cover - Goal Indicator (A).................................................................................... 62 7.2.2 Water Quality - Goal Indicator (B)................................................................................................. 64 7.2.3 Mountain Gorilla populations in Bwindi and the Virungas - Goal Indicator (C)....................... 64 7.2.4 Abundance of Large Mammals – Goal Indicator (D)..................................................................... 64 7.2.5 Populations of Grauer’s Rush Warbler – Goal Indicator (E)....................................................... 65 7.2.6 Contribution to USAID Strategic Objective 7............................................................................ 66 8 Sustainability of Project Activities & Results ............................................................................69 9 Key issues. ............................................................................................................................................70 10 Conclusions. ..........................................................................................................................................72 Tables and Figures AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 iv Table 1. Ranking of the 15 critical threats to the Landscape..................................................................... 26 Table 2. Progress report on Threat Reduction Strategies (HCP, August 2005).......................................... 27 Table 3. Strategies identified to deal with the threat of agricultural conversion.................................... 29 Table 4. Revenues to UWA from Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks ......................................................... 36 Box 1. Summary of Project Review............................................................................................................................9 Box 2. What is the Heartland Concept? ............................................................................................................... 20 Box 3. Suggested key elements of Scope of work for a National Heartland “Pacemaker”........................ 25 Box 4. Abstract – Hatfield Economics Paper........................................................................................................ 33 Box 5. The NCDF-UWA Gorilla Permit Deal.......................................................................................................... 45 Box 6. Extract from ICD Review............................................................................................................................ 57 Figure 1. A more logical framework.........................................................................................................................13 Figure 2. Suggested Organigramme for Heartland Coordination..................................................................... 25 Figure 3. Architectural Drawing of Visitor Centre, Mgahinga......................................................................... 38 Figure 4. Mgahinga Visitor Centre: Progress so far........................................................................................... 38 Figure 5. Buhoma main street – unsightly infrastructure in a high-profile tourism destination.............51 Figure 6. Illustration of stronger links between development rewards and conservation incentives.... 58 Figure 7. Trends in abundance of large mammals (2002-2005) ....................................................................... 67 Figure 8. Trends in Ranger Based Monitoring Results 2002-2005................................................................. 68 Annexes Annex 1. Scope of work for evaluation.............................................................................................................. 74 Annex 2: Schedule for Review.................................................................................................................................. 78 Annex 3. Documents Reviewed:............................................................................................................................... 79 Annex 4. Key persons met........................................................................................................................................ 80 Annex 5. Logical Framework .................................................................................................................................... 82 Annex 6. Review of HCP process - Summary of Questionnaire results......................................................... 86 Annex 7. Decisions influenced by ITFC ................................................................................................................ 87 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 v Acronyms & Abbreviations: AWF African Wildlife Foundation AUTO Association of Uganda Tour Operators; CARE DTC CARE Development through Conservation Project CARPE Central African Regional Program for the Environment -USAID BINP Bwindi Impenetrable National Park CBV Conservation Business Venture CC Community Conservation DRC Democratic Republic of Congo FFI Fauna and Flora International GEF Global Environment Fund GRASP The Great Ape Survival Project (GrASP) of UNEP in partnership with UNESCO GVL Greater Virunga Landscape HCP Heartland Conservation Planning HuGo Human Gorilla Conflict resolution project ICCN Institute Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature IGCP International Gorilla Conservation Program ITFC Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation LG Local Government MoU Memorandum of Understanding. NEMS National Evaluation & Monitoring System MBIFCT Mgahinga & Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust. MGNP Mgahinga Gorilla National Park NCDF Nkuringo Conservation and Development Foundation ORTNP Office Rwandaise de la Tourisme et Parcs Nationaux PA Protected Area PAA Protected Area Authority PAMSU Protected Area Management Support Unit PNV Parc National des Volcans PNVi Parc National des Virunga UCOTA Uganda Community Tourism Association UNDP United Nations Development Program UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. USAID United States Agency for International Development UWA Uganda Wildlife Authority WCS Wildlife Conservation Society WWF World Wildlife Fund for Nature. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 1 1 Project/Activity Summary Final evaluation of the USAID funded’ Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project Associate Award under Leader Award LAG-A-00-99-00053-00 of the Global Conservation Program USAID/Uganda Contributing to USAID Uganda Mission’s Strategic Objective 7: “Expanded sustainable economic opportunities for rural sector growth” (see Results Framework in Annex 5). Evaluation Type: Final evaluation to assess the “Life of Project” performance. Project Name: Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context Project Duration: A project agreement was signed with USAID on 24 April 2002. The project was initially for three years and slotted for completion on April 25th 2005. The African Wildlife Foundation requested a no-cost extension for an additional three months and the project completion date is now July 25th 2005. Project Implementing Organization: African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) This project was implemented by AWF working with and through the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP). Africa contact: Hassan Sachedina (HSachedina@awfke.org) PO Box 48177 Nairobi, Kenya Phone 254-2-710367 Fax 254-2-710372 USA contact: Adam Henson (AHenson@awf.org) 1400 16th St. NW Suite 120 Washington DC 20036 Phone: (202) 939-3333 Fax: (202) 939-3332 Principal Partners: 1. Fauna and Flora International (FFI) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), through coalition with AWF in the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), the main project implementing mechanism. 2. The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) 3. The Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) 4. The Uganda Community Tourism Association (UCOTA) AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 2 Project Objectives Project Goal: Greater Virunga Landscape better conserved Project Purpose: Virunga Landscape in Uganda better managed Intermediate Results: 1. Landscape planning & Monitoring approach applied to GVL; 2. Key strategies for threat abatement implemented. 3. Regional frameworks strengthened 4. National and Regional Policy improved. 5. Protected areas serving as ecological and economic core areas of the landscape 6. Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in GVL. Relationship between the key institutions The International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), a collaborative program of African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has become the principal effort to support the conservation of the mountain gorillas throughout their habitat spanning three countries, as well as a model for cooperation. In addressing issues at the broader “landscape context”, AWF supports IGCP activities in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through other U.S. Government funding. This includes USAID funding through the Gorilla Directive, USAID Africa Bureau funding through CARPE and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Great Apes Conservation Fund. Further funding for regional activities has also been made available from the MacArthur Foundation. Total Project Cost Requested from USAID Uganda: US$ 1,999,959 Total Funds Allocated by USAID Uganda to Date (07-24-05): US$2,049,605 Project Location: The Mgahinga Gorilla National Park; the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park; portions of the surrounding districts of Runkungiri, Kabale and Kisoro. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 3 2 Recommendations The following list summarises all the recommendations for action, based on the evaluation, made throughout the report with reference to the page number on which they occur. Details and rationale for the recommendations can be found in the corresponding sections on the Intermediate Results in Section 6 along the lines of the Intermediate Result areas. Key recommendations: R. 1 Refine future Performance Monitoring Plans to provide for more qualitative evaluation of the impacts of achieving defined results in any future programme................................................................16 R. 2 Ensure that now functioning monitoring and reporting systems support an adaptive management approach of all project partners......................................................................................................................16 R. 3 IGCP/AWF should expand their close liaison beyond UWA to new institutions, particularly through strengthening links with Local Government and agricultural development organisations...................17 R. 4 IGCP/AWF and UWA should consider contracting out more of their workload (e.g. to business development experts) and instead focus on their core mandates. ..........................................................17 R. Continue to use NGOs for catalyzing partnerships, group formation & capacity building and more actively enroll private sector partners to develop products and markets;............................................18 R. 7 In future, acknowledge the long time that it takes to get communities on board in new and complex projects, where possible simplifying both the objectives, and the process in the design phase;....19 R. 8 Ensure continued support for processes to achieve early CBV successes, even if this means accepting less-ambitious outcomes than planned.........................................................................................19 R. 9. Future phases should be less ambitious and balance embarking on complex processes with achieving early demonstrable results..............................................................................................................19 R. 10 Increase UWA’s ability to prioritise, and capacity to implement key activities on schedule, through targeted planning and management skills training........................................................................19 R. 11 Conduct more bottom-up planning with partners in the field, replicating the participatory Annual Operational Planning that is done at national level for each Conservation Area. .................................19 R. 12. Standardise Landscape planning processes at national level for all PAs..............................................21 R. 13 Review the range of planning processes that are being promoted in the region and identify commonalities and ways to harmonise processes and reduce the demand on scarce staff time of all partners (Local Govt, NGOs, UWA, Private Sector, Etc). ........................................................................ 23 R. 14 Review relevance and impacts of Heartland Conservation Planning to actual decision making processes (UWA, District Local Government, etc) on the ground.......................................................... 23 R. 15 Set up National & regional Heartland Coordination Forum that can meet periodically to review progress against the plan and ensure exchange of information, ideas, plans & progress reports... 23 R. 16 The Chairmanship of the proposed Forum should be a position that is either rotated between partner institutions, or embedded permanently in a neutral national institution................................ 23 R. 17 Produce the HCP “Plan” in Tabular / Wall-Poster format and distribute to all partners................. 23 R. 18 HCP partners should collectively recruit and support the new position of a national “Heartlands Pacemaker” to coordinate implementation of the plan............................................................................... 24 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 4 R. 19 Agree on coordination modalities between all key partners. .................................................................. 24 R. 20 Expand the HCP process to more effectively cover Echuya Forest Reserve and involve the National Forestry Authority in its implementation. ................................................................................... 24 R. 22 Invest more effort in building a broader “conservation alliance”......................................................... 24 R. 23 Convene future HCP meetings around “key issues”................................................................................... 24 R. 25 Threats analysis should go beyond simply identifying ‘threats’ to quantifying their significance, and more clearly understand who are the “threateners”, and what drives them;................................31 R. 26 Consider hiring a social scientist to explore the root causes of the key threats in more detail under the ITFC research programme;............................................................................................................31 R. 28 Criteria for inclusion of individuals in CBVs such as HuGo should ensure that hunters and other “threateners” who wish to “reform” are not excluded. ..............................................................................31 R. 29 Include monitoring of soil fertility in the zone surrounding the National Parks;...............................31 R. 30 Engage other project partners to specifically target agricultural development and resource conservation in the Zone immediately surrounding the NPs;.....................................................................31 R. 31 Appoint one organisation to spearhead the continuation of regional cooperation activities........... 32 R. 32 Develop mechanisms for reinforcing legal validity and implementation of decisions taken at regional forums in the respective countries. ............................................................................................... 32 R. 33 Ensure IGCP/AWF have active role in the ongoing Wildlife policy review process.......................... 32 R. 34 Summarise and disseminate the findings of the economic study to key decision makers with clear policy recommendations as to how to increase local and national level revenues. ............................... 34 R. 35 A follow up study on economic valuation should determine more realistically how the relative costs and benefits of conservation are distributed, locally, nationally and internationally.............. 34 R. 39 IGCP/AWF should review the draft Tourism Regulations, once available, and carefully and strategically influence their final form and content.................................................................................. 35 R. 41 Develop Policy Working Group of key representatives from stakeholder institutions around specific policies, to maximise opportunities for exchange of experiences and ideas, and coordinate lobbying efforts.................................................................................................................................................. 36 R. 42 Actively engage with the Private Sector & Civil Society throughout the Policy review process through face-to-face meetings, newsletters, media events, etc............................................................ 36 R. 43 UWA should consider either leaving present signage around Bwindi & Mgahinga to save funds for other more important activities or phasing the new signage to change BINP/MGNP signs at end of the process........................................................................................................................................................... 37 R. 46 Spread the training over a longer period in future to allow staff to assimilate;.............................. 40 R. 47 Build capacity of senior staff to take on mentoring / in-house training role; ................................... 40 R. 48 Consider contracting evaluation of the impacts of training to professional organisations rather than conducting “in-house”. .............................................................................................................................. 40 R. 49 Consider contributing to core funding of ITFC to ensure long term support for monitoring and research on priority issues................................................................................................................................41 R. 50 Speed up and consolidate research on the impacts of Gorilla-Tracking on Gorilla Health and conservation and present a stronger case for its recommendations; .................................................... 42 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 5 R. 53 Lobby for 1) a technical committee to be established specifically to advise the UWA Board on key issues relating to Gorilla / Great Ape Conservation and related tourism and 2) to try to obtain seats on it............................................................................................................................................................. 42 R. 54 Prioritise research that will inform key forthcoming UWA management decisions......................... 42 R. 56 Analyse UWA’s decision-making process which resulted in an increase number of Gorilla Permits ................................................................................................................................................................................ 42 R. 57 Further simplify key recommendations emerging from research and seek new channels to present the message to those actually making the final decision. ......................................................................... 43 R. 58 Inform other stakeholders (such as tourism associations and the relevant media) of the position of IGCP to raise public awareness of critical conservation issues and win more popular support for IGCP’s recommendations................................................................................................................................... 43 R. 59. Lobby USAID and other donors to core-finance UWA, and support business models that expand and diversify tourism away from Gorillas and that take a more holistic approach to supporting UWA’s institutional and financial sustainability.......................................................................................... 43 R. 60 Research the effectiveness of UWA Policy towards problem animal control (a key source of conflict between PAAs and local communities)............................................................................................ 43 R. 61 Research the socio-economic impacts of tourism development in Buhoma, e.g. HIV, prostitution resulting largely from increased security presence in the area, and specific impacts on the Batwa, who are being regularly called away from their fields to “perform” for tourist groups on the cultural walks....................................................................................................................................................... 43 R. 62 Continue research into impacts of tourism on gorillas. In particular research should investigate options that reduce impacts on gorillas but maintain valuable revenue................................................. 43 R. 64 Research potential of linking the range of benefits provided by conservation bodies to location￾specific indicators of conservation performance by particular communities....................................... 43 R. 65 Deepen Project/Community analysis and understanding of the experiences of other community￾private sector ecotourism partnerships........................................................................................................ 46 R. 66 Support NCDF to hire competent lawyers to help them draft and negotiate the contract........... 46 R. 67 Continue to seek other development partners that can support activities in Nkuringo to avoid over-dependence on AWF/IGCP support. ..................................................................................................... 46 R. 68 Accelerate process of establishing alternative cash crops (e.g. Tea, Artemisia) that can be grown on the shared area, and keep community expectations of potential benefits realistic..................... 47 R. 69 Encourage “Amajambere Iwachu” to go ahead with Red Chilli on a revised business model........... 49 R. 70 Assess the potential of using the UNDP Grant to kick-start a business oriented rainwater￾harvesting scheme, and/or tree nurseries, managed by MCDO; ............................................................. 49 R. 71 Facilitate the issuing of a leasehold title by MUST to Buhoma Community Rest Camp Development Association........................................................................................................................................................... 50 R. 72 Invest more efforts to explain the Private sector / Community partnership concept to the Buhoma Community Association membership. .............................................................................................. 50 R. 73 Revise format of Rest Camp accounts to show profits before grants are given to community projects and use to leverage bank credits, or donor co-financing.......................................................... 50 R. 74 Support Association to break down their upgrading plan into simple phases and perhaps make the overall investment plan less ambitious........................................................................................................... 50 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 6 R. 75 Assess the potential for giving Buhoma main street a much-needed face-lift...................................51 R. 76 Provide more rewards to HuGo Groups that effectively report illegal activities and where indicators from RBM data show reducing levels of threat within the park.......................................... 53 R. 78 Conduct more participatory research and development work into finding ways in which the HuGo groups can expand their mandates to include a wider range of conservation interventions (such as reporting illegal activities, and other problem animals such as elephant, buffalo and “vermin”) in return for support to group members to improve local livelihoods......................................................... 53 R. 79 Develop mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of finance for the HuGo groups.......................... 53 R. 80 Summarise the process of achieving the issuance of permits to community groups in a case study / briefing note to disseminate lessons learned to other IGCP partners............................................... 54 R. 81 Lobby UWA to package any future increase in prices of Gorilla tracking permits with an improved revenue sharing arrangement with frontline community institutions such as HuGo groups, which clearly contribute to conservation.................................................................................................................. 54 R. 83 Support/contribute to a review of the UWA Revenue-Sharing policy that shifts funding priorities towards those that have a direct and positive conservation linkage (such as supporting HuGo / Problem Animal Control initiatives). ................................................................................................. 55 R. 84 Make more use of existing grant-making mechanisms such as MBIFCT to channel support to initiatives in local communities. ....................................................................................................................... 55 R. 85 Strengthen efforts to identify CBVs that have clear impacts on reducing key threats, and are directly accessible to the key threateners.................................................................................................. 56 R. 87 Focus NGO efforts more on group formation, skills training, linking CBVs to Private Sector Partners, capacity building in governance, managerial, accountability and negotiation skills ........... 56 R. 88 Strengthen sustainable business partnerships between CBV Associations (e.g. NCDF, Bwindi Beekeeping Development Association, Craft Groups, etc) and Private Sector to focus on product development, advertising, increasing access to markets, and boosting sales....................................... 56 R. 91 Identify and promote opportunities to transfer CBV Technology Packages such as bamboo planting and mushroom growing to other programs (e.g. Africa2000Net, NAADs, Africare etc) and local extension services..................................................................................................................................... 56 R. 92 Invest more efforts in identifying and promoting a more diverse range of tourism products...... 59 R. 93 Make linkages with Private Sector to assess and test the potential for boosting sales of craft materials, within the region or internationally. ........................................................................................... 59 R. 94 ITFC/IGCP Monitoring Officer should work closely with UWA to assess the consistency of RBM data collection methods and the accuracy of the results obtained. Data should be disaggregated to reflect trends in different sectors of the forest................................................................................ 62 R. 95 Project interventions should make all efforts to identify the actual “threateners”, and not just the generic “threats”, and develop strategies for addressing this particular socio-economic group. ................................................................................................................................................................................ 62 R. 96 Repeat survey of tree & pole cutting as soon as possible to provide a repeat measurement against which to monitor performance of this project at purpose level, and to serve as baseline for future activities if funded under PRIME/West....................................................................................................... 63 R. 98 Request WCS to repeat Satellite image analysis at the earliest opportunity to provide a baseline for PRIME/West and an end-of-project assessment for the USAID funded IGCP/AWF project under review, and link to BEGO/IGCP support. ........................................................................................... 63 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 7 R. 99 Assess the potential for monitoring remnant natural forest patches and woodlots outside the park using LandSat7 TM, IKONOS or fixed-point photography............................................................. 64 R. 100 Extend monitoring of water quality to sample points downstream from the Park perimeter to determine trends in impacts of land use changes outside the park. ...................................................... 64 R. 101 Verify the accuracy of RBM estimates of large mammal populations and either work to improve methods to increase statistical validity or explore more objective monitoring methods................. 65 R. 102 Monitor populations and spatial distribution of “vermin” species – bushpig and baboon; .............. 65 R. 103 Develop appropriate mechanisms to regulate their populations on the forest edge to manageable levels for local farmers..................................................................................................................................... 65 R. 104 Develop new strategies that address the complex of poaching and “vermin control” and identify longer-term solutions to crop-raiding such as Mauritius thorn hedges, or other suitable barriers. ................................................................................................................................................................................ 65 R. 105 Monitoring of Grauer’s Rush Warbler should be extended to some swamps outside the PAs (such as Nyamuriro Swamp on the edge of Bwindi) to determine whether there are indeed corresponding drops in warbler populations there................................................................................................................. 66 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 8 3 Introduction The broad objective of this evaluation is to assess the performance of the USAID-funded ’Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project during the entire activity period; April 2002 – July 2005. The development problems being addressed were summarised in the Project Application as: (a) Increasing threats to forest and gorillas are originating in the surrounding landscape. (b) Insufficient capacity in the parks prevents them from serving as core areas of the landscape in a sustainable fashion. (c) Opportunities for rural communities to engage in enterprises that capture value from the resources of their region are insufficiently developed. The assistance provided under this project aimed to achieve the following objectives: (a) Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL) managed to ensure the conservation of mountain gorillas and other priority conservation targets; (b) Increased capacity of protected areas to serve as ecological and economic core areas of the landscape; (c) Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in the GVL. These were later reformulated into 6 Intermediate Results (see Annex 5). Assistance was in the form of technical and financial assistance to the Uganda Wildlife Authority for the in￾park components, and to development of “Conservation-Business Ventures” through forging partnerships between communities and private sector surrounding the Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks. Support was also provided to regional planning & coordination processes. The target audiences for this report are: o USAID – Funding Donor; o UWA – as the Management Authority for the National Parks. o IGCP Partners – for future activities (e.g. possible grant under PRIME/West) o PRIME/West - for its own landscape approaches to conservation in the same region, and in the case that it will supervise some future grant-funded work of IGCP; The detailed scope of work is provided in Annex 1, and is summarised in 4 simple questions: 1. Did we/they succeed? (SoW 1) o Were activities implemented as planned, or with good reasons for deviations? o Were Intermediate Results achieved, and contribute to Purpose & Goal level success? 2. How were partners involved? (SoW 2) o Were partners, stakeholders, and beneficiaries of the project adequately involved in planning, implementation and monitoring activities? AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 9 3. Will it last? (SoW 3) o Can initiatives supported under this project now continue without external support, and if not, what will be required to ensure that they are sustained. 4. Any lessons for a next time? (SoW 4) o What can be learned from this project, and how can they be incorporated into any future activities to be funded by USAID, or its partners. The team focussed in particular on this last question relating to the future. In a nutshell, the overall conclusions of the review are shown in the box below. Details are provided in the Conclusions in Section 10. Box 1. Summary of Project Review. Success Performance indicators all positive, but recovery of wildlife populations and changing conservation behaviours are both slow processes. The project has piloted cost-effective solutions to conservation in the form of strengthened UWA capacity to implement adaptive management of the Protected Areas, and community-based institutions with conservation mandates (e.g. HuGo groups) both of which should be built on in the future. Participation There has been strong IGCP liaison with project partners (esp. UWA) and they are now broadening the conservation alliance to Local Govt, and CSOs. Sustainability The new Conservation Business Ventures developed look promising, but need more support beyond the end of the project to bear fruits. The pressure on UWA to increase Gorilla revenues could emerge as a new and increasing threat to their long-term health and behaviour. IGCP and other development partners should explore options to core-finance UWA and support it to develop business models that expand and diversify tourism away from Gorillas. Lessons learned. Many valuable lessons have been learned which should be internalised by PRIME / West, UWA & IGCP partners through a targeted communication strategy; AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 10 4 Evaluation Approach and Methods 4.1 The Team Name Role Institution LoE James Acworth Team Leader – review of documentation. Field consultations and verification. Independent Consultant 18 Days Anthony Ratter Technical Review of findings and draft report, and facilitating stakeholder meetings Independent Consultant 6 Days Steven Asuma Member - Project Partner Programme Officer, IGCP As required James Byamukama Member - Project Partner Field Officer, IGCP As required Innocent Garakumbe Member - Project Partner Senior Enterprise Officer, AWF As required Alastair McNeilage Member – Project Partner Director, ITFC As required Helga Rainer Member - Project Partner Senior Program Officer, AWF As required 4.2 Method The evaluation addressed the specific objectives defined in the Scope of Work through a mixed methods approach. 1. Evaluation work plan development workshop During the first three days of the evaluation process an initial workshop with project partners. The scope of work for the consultancy was presented to partners, and the method for evaluation, as outlined in this section. While fulfilling the need to evaluate past performance, the team requested Project Partners to put emphasis on learning lessons for the future. A detailed evaluation work plan was agreed for field visits and a final workshop to present the findings of the evaluation (see Annex 2). The evaluation team presented the original logical framework and indicators, and then provided an opportunity for the Project implementing partners to self evaluate the project performance by Intermediate Results, highlighting positive achievements, areas where setbacks, weakness or problems had been experienced, and to identify key lessons learned, and issues for the review team to focus on. Results of this exercise are not included in this report, but were availed to project partners. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 11 2. Review of background documentation Over the period of the consultancy the team leader reviewed a wide range of Project documents to assess whether targets were achieved against those identified in the defined Results and Indicators from the Planning Document and the Performance Management Plan. Annex 3 summarizes existing information sources relevant to this study. 3. Participatory process The evaluation team carried out interviews, group discussions, site visits and mini-workshops with all partners, beneficiaries and interested parties both in Kampala and in the field, as the major component of the evaluation process. o A number of field visits were made to the project’s ultimate beneficiaries (Community Groups) to see their infrastructures and to discuss practical aspects of their work. o A one-day meeting with project beneficiaries at community level was held in Kisoro on the 29th July. Annex 4 provides a full list of field visits and consultations made. Given the short time available for the review generally we have attempted to: o Focus on the essential; o Encourage Project Partners and beneficiaries to self-evaluate performance; o Rapidly cross-check the Performance Management Plan (PMP); o Focus on helping partners learn some key lessons from the review process. 4. Final Stakeholder workshop o At the final meeting held in Kampala on the 11th August, the team leader presented the evaluation findings to the project partners i.e. USAID, AWF/IGCP, UWA, UCOTA and ITFC. o Inputs from workshop participants were integrated into the analysis and the overall findings presented to USAID on the 16th August, and then integrated into the final report. o Overall it is anticipated that the findings of the review will form the basis of any follow on projects developed to support the conservation of the mountain gorillas and afro-montane forests. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 12 5 Project Design & Implementation The project was designed in a participatory manner, with an initial concept developed by IGCP and ITFC, that was adopted by AWF and UWA with opportunities for substantial modification to meet the objectives of the different partners. Over the years IGCP has provided a model for partner support, that UWA wish other partners to emulate. The project design (see Annex 5) is based on the Landscape approach to identified “Heartlands” that AWF have adopted (see section 6.1 for more details and analysis). USAID SO7: Expanded sustainable economic opportunities for rural sector growth; Project Goal: GVL better conserved Project Purpose: VL in Uganda better managed Intermediate Results: 1.Landscape planning & monitoring approach applied to GVL. 2.Key strategies for threat abatement implemented. 3.Regional frameworks strengthened 4.National and Regional Policy improved. 5.Protected areas serving as ecological and economic core areas of the landscape 6.Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in GVL. 5.1 Validity of intervention logic The original project design was intended to contribute to USAID (Uganda) Mission’s Strategic Objective SO2 on conservation (see below), but at the time that the project was being formulated, USAID was also revising its Strategic Plans and SO2 was later subsumed into SO7. Former USAID Strategic Objective 2: “Critical Ecosystems conserved to sustain biological diversity and to enhance benefits to society” Indicators: • Ecosystem Health and biodiversity maintained - Population of mountain gorillas maintained • Critical Ecosystems generate benefits and revenues - Annual revenue generated from ecotourism by UWA • Critical Ecosystems managed rationally - number of critical areas operating under integrated management plans or community resource agreements; Until very recently there were no indicators under SO7 that related to environment. The Project’s goal level indicators of success are entirely conservation oriented and not development indicators. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 13 The initial project proposal had three Intermediate Results, and these were reoriented to become six IRs as shown in Annex 5. As reformulated, the Project’s IR6 (expanded economic opportunities) is synonymous with SO7. The project in general was anticipated to contribute to SO7 through improved management of the parks supporting increasing tourism potential. IR6 was also presented as a strategy not just for rural development, but for threat abatement (IR2), and thus as a means to the project purpose, i.e. Conservation through Development… via an un-stated but implicit result: o “Increased adoption by communities of better conservation behaviours.” This is illustrated in a revised, more logical framework in Figure 1 below. The Team has therefore assessed project initiatives for both their development merits (and contribution to SO7), and their contribution to conservation as outlined in the original SO2. The need to achieve a higher conservation objective has been made clearer under PRIME/West (Biodiversity Earmark). Figure 1. A more logical framework SO7 Expanded sustainable economic opportunities for rural sector growth Project Goal GVL better conserved Project Purpose VL in Uganda better managed IR2 Increased Adoption by Communities of better conservation behaviours IR2.1 (was IR2) Key strategies for threat abatement implemented IR2.2 (was IR6) Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in GVL Greater conservation impacts could probably have been achieved, through further integration of the activities into packages, whereby “increased adoption by communities of better conservation behaviours” are more clearly linked to “benefits”, even if the benefits or new enterprises that are supported are not directly conservation related. In future the evaluation team recommends that as justification for any interventions, a strong and demonstrable link should be made between: AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 14 A. Better conservation as measured by “performance indicators” derived from timely & targeted monitoring of trends in: • community compliance with agreed rules (reducing signs of illegal activity) • community support for law enforcement (frequency and effectiveness of reporting illegal activities to the Responsible Body – UWA/NFA). • conservation targets (wildlife populations, etc) and B. Distribution of conservation-related benefits to local communities: • Revenue sharing mechanisms of UWA; • Support to enterprise development in park adjacent communities; • Grants from development partners and MBIFCT for a range of development and infrastructural projects; • Employment opportunities, etc. Lack of linkage in the minds of local communities reduces the cost-effectiveness of limited conservation-oriented funds. ‘Tweaking’ the incentives for conservation and disincentives against illegal / unsustainable activities is key to cost-effective conservation. The IGCP partnership and other conservation projects have the opportunity to learn from the review of impacts of fifteen years of ICD activities in and around the Bwindi & Mgahinga National Parks. Lessons are both varied and not always supportive of the logic / hypotheses that were originally put forward for some activities in the project design. A pragmatic lessons learning / adaptive management approach has been adopted by the Project team although there are still some lessons that will need to be addressed in future project phases. These are discussed in more detail later in the report, especially under IR6.1 under which many of the key ICD interventions with local communities were implemented. 5.2 Critical assumptions and Risks A number of critical assumptions and risks were inherent in the project design and are reviewed here: • A conducive regional environment for the growth of ecotourism: This assumption has held true to date. No further security incidents have occurred during the project lifespan, and generally the levels of tourists visiting Uganda is increasing, and facilities are improving. • Ability to impact livelihoods of a significant proportion of local people: Impacts on livelihoods as a result of project initiatives have been limited to date in terms of economic benefit (direct and spin off). The evident enthusiasm among local communities for conservation has more to do with anticipated benefits than demonstrated results; sustaining this enthusiasm relies on achieving results in the near future. • Ability to mitigate threats: while threats have been identified in generic terms, the details, in terms of “who are the threateners?” and “what drives them?” have not been AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 15 sufficiently answered. Strategies to abate or mitigate those threats have therefore been vaguely targeted and have not been as effective as they could have been. However the assumption holds true – i.e. that it remains possible to identify and address threats directly or indirectly within the manageable interests of the stakeholders involved. An un-stated but important assumption in the original project design was that • Distribution of conservation-related benefits* to local communities will lead to better conservation behaviour as measured by conservation performance indicators;* such as: o Revenue sharing; o CBV enterprise development; o Grants for development / infrastructure; This assumption remains unproven: Insufficient conceptual linkages have been made between benefits given by project and expected improvements in conservation behaviour to fully test this assumption; The review of Integrated Conservation & Development (ICD) Strategies (ITFC et al, 2005), and summarised in Box 6 on page 57 did not specifically test how Conservation Business Ventures change conservation behaviour. Instead, it was designed to test strategies that had been implemented for a longer period, that were more likely to show change. 5.3 Appropriateness of Monitoring Plan Generally indicators and targets identified in the PMP were poor. Too much simplistic quantification was expected, i.e.: o [number of] policies under development or completed (IR4); o number of key actions addressing critical threats o number of decisions influenced; o number of enterprises initiated, etc o number of monitoring and research activities underway or completed … without defining the quality of impacts required: o extent to which policies have been influenced by project actions; o effectiveness of actions to actually reduce critical threats; o gravity of decisions informed and how much influence was achieved; o value and viability of enterprises initiated, etc; This makes assessment of real impacts of the project difficult, as it is possible for the project to report how very simplistic quantitative targets were met, even though their contribution to the broader project objectives may be small. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 16 It also tempts the project implementation partners to become engaged in many activities (to achieve the numbers targets!) rather than prioritise and focus on activities that achieve high quality results that really contribute to project purpose and goal. Lack of systematic monitoring of the key indicators (e.g. occurrences of illegal activities, large mammal populations), and statistically questionable means of verification (i.e. Ranger￾based monitoring) has provided an arbitrary picture of goal and purpose level trends over time that generates more subjective debate than objective insight into the success or otherwise of the project to achieve its objectives. Irregular reporting against PMP and weak implementation of other monitoring frameworks (e.g. the HCP) undermine their potential value to support adaptive management. Many of the trends have only become apparent right at the end of the 3-year project and there was no scope to use the information to guide partners towards more effective project implementation during this project phase. On the positive side, a key result of this phase of the project is the range of innovative, planning, monitoring and research programmes. Now that these systems are functioning smoothly (in most cases), timely monitoring and reporting of performance to project partners should provide valuable insight to the effectiveness of a range of interventions, and greatly improve adaptive management approaches in the future. Finally, we support the project partners’ reminder that some of the longer term conservation targets cannot statistically be shown to have been met in a short 3 year period (i.e. gorilla population changes) or necessarily assign success to just one 3 year project among many broader interventions over a much longer period of time, but that nonetheless monitoring of these ultimate conservation targets/goals should be included in the long-term. Recommendations R. 1 Refine future Performance Monitoring Plans to provide for more qualitative evaluation of the impacts of achieving defined results in any future programme. R. 2 Ensure that now functioning monitoring and reporting systems support an adaptive management approach of all project partners. 5.4 Project Implementation Stakeholder participation Generally, UWA (key partner) are very supportive of the level of their participation in the IGCP/AWF project planning process and project implementation. o IGCP/AWF and other partners are invited to participate in the overall Annual Operational Planning exercises at HQ level. Partner funding is thus reflected in UWA budgets, and responsibility is clearly apportioned to specific partners. o Reporting is done through UWA’s financial and activity reporting systems. o UWA are largely responsible for the implementation of the activities within the Protected Areas, while IGCP/AWF staff provide only technical backstopping where required. This has resulted in substantial capacity building of UWA Staff. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 17 o With project support, UWA Community Conservation Staff are also working directly with frontline communities1 , mobilising groups and providing training, materials and follow up. As a result, communities now see UWA delivering benefits rather than the partner organisation. This has greatly enhanced UWA’s public relations with the communities and has changed the perception that they are the “bad-guys” (Park Police) while project partners deliver the benefits, thus “out-shining” UWA. o UWA are promoting this model to other development partners to adopt, and have incorporated the concept into their Partnership Policy. Clearly, the IGCP/AWF approach to partnership with UWA (the primary partner in the programme) is both participatory and successful. However, there is a much wider range of partnerships identified as being necessary to implement the broad diversity of activities to mitigate threats across the landscape, Some institutions reported feeling that they would like to have been involved more closely in the activities of the project, particularly Local Governments, and the MBIFCT, both of whom feel they have a more active role to play in development initiatives and could have facilitated some of IGCP/AWF project implementation. Activities such as development and support for CBVs and development of the Heartland Conservation Plan have been driven more by IGCP/AWF than the other project partners. While UWA and other stakeholders have participated to a degree, they did not develop much sense of ownership. Some further effort to transfer ownership of these activities to durable institutions within the region is required. R. 3 IGCP/AWF should expand their close liaison beyond UWA to new institutions, particularly through strengthening links with Local Government and agricultural development organisations. Appropriateness of allocated roles The team also questioned the necessity of UWA or IGCP staff actually implementing Community support programmes with their own staff rather than simply facilitating linkages with professional service providers, where they exist. UWA Community Conservation staff, and IGCP staff risk becoming ‘jacks of all trades’. This may be distracting them from addressing more critical challenges (such as dealing with crop raiding by wildlife) that fall more clearly within their mandate, (see issues raised in Section 6.6). R. 4 IGCP/AWF and UWA should consider contracting out more of their workload (e.g. to business development experts) and instead focus on their core mandates. Public relations (e.g. from support given to community enterprise development) can still be maintained by clearly introducing such support as UWA initiatives; In some cases, NGOs have also been engaged to develop Conservation Business Ventures. While they have an important role in mobilization and building institutional capacity at 1 ‘Frontline’ communities are those that actually border the National Parks. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 18 community level, it is critical to link community groups to sustainable markets as soon as possible. This is much more effectively achieved by private sector than NGO partners. R. 5 Continue to use NGOs for catalyzing partnerships, group formation & capacity building and more actively enroll private sector partners to develop products and markets; Process versus results There are perennial debates as to the relative importance of project “process” and “results”. Clearly this review team is evaluating results, which are more and more being demanded by the donors (especially USAID) over and above engagement in “processes”. But the “process” has sometimes had positive impacts that are important to acknowledge. Often the complex process of getting all stakeholders on board (e.g. in new approaches to community based conservation and tourism) takes much longer than envisaged and concrete results are difficult to achieve in the relatively short time frame of a grant (in this case 3 years). This is one reason why the IGCP partners decided to take a longer-term view and set up the IGCP “project” that outlives the typical duration of any single grant. In the context of this project, key processes that are considered to have strengthened capacities of previously marginalised stakeholders (especially frontline communities) include: o Negotiation of Community-based Eco-lodge in Nkuringo. Communities have been substantially empowered by their involvement in the negotiation process in terms of increased leverage over the way that tourism investments are planned, and how benefits are shared (even though the eco-lodge has yet to be built). o Establishment of HuGo groups – they are already effective (i.e. results have been achieved), but a great deal of additional impact of the HuGo groups (controlling illegal activities and promoting conservation ethics within their communities - see section 6.6) has derived from the approach to, and process of establishing the groups and not the intended result (which was more simply to reduce Gorilla crop raiding). The process of building UWA willingness and capacity to adopt new approaches to tourism and conservation that involve communities also has important ramifications for the future. Likewise the support provided to developing UWA’s planning, implementation and monitoring procedures using a more holistic landscape approach would generate benefits beyond their limited impacts observed during this project phase. Another phase can build on the firm foundation of functioning HuGo groups, institutionalising some of the added conservation-supportive roles that they have begun to adopt. However in other endeavours, the expected results (functional eco-lodge) still lay some way ahead. This is in large part due to the very complexity of the anticipated agreement that was proposed. These processes have already demanded huge commitments of time and effort from community groups and support should be continued to a successful conclusion. Recommendations: AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 19 R. 8 In future, acknowledge the long time that it takes to get communities on board in new and complex projects, where possible simplifying both the objectives, and the process in the design phase; R. 9 Ensure continued support for processes to achieve early CBV successes, even if this means accepting less-ambitious outcomes than planned. Timeliness A recurring theme in evaluation reports of previous phases of the IGCP project, and again observed in this review, has been the apparent slow implementation of some activities, meaning that many are incomplete by the end of the project. This seems to be the result of a number of factors: o Elongated community planning processes to agree on modalities of community based project interventions; o Unanticipated derailments of planned processes; o Ambitious targets by the Project partners; o Insufficient prioritisation to identify some critical activities and focus on them, and to drop others that distract from key areas of success; (e.g. Senior UWA staff acknowledge that the “unforeseen AOBs” that are regularly added to their programme often get in the way of scheduled activities); o Slow response / decision making from UWA management to some proposals made by the project, and delayed reporting of activities due to overstretched human resources, and perhaps insufficient delegation; o Staff shortages in the field have been in part responsible for deficiencies in timely implementation of activities and effective reporting. R. 10. Future phases should be less ambitious and balance embarking on complex processes with achieving early demonstrable results. R. 11 Increase UWA’s ability to prioritise, and capacity to implement key activities on schedule, through targeted planning and management skills training. R. 12 Conduct more bottom-up planning with partners in the field, replicating the participatory Annual Operational Planning that is done at national level for each Conservation Area. Note that Bwindi & Mgahinga are one Conservation Area (CA). Integrating results of this bottom-up plan into UWA’s overall AOP rather than the other way round may result in more realistic plans that are within the capacity of the CA staff on the ground to implement. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 20 6 Achievement of Intermediate Results The effective implementation of “Main Activities” and “Activities” is assessed in this section, and key issues identified. 6.1 The Heartland Conservation Planning Process (IR1). Assessment of HCP Method: The Heartland Conservation Planning (HCP) process follows a logical and sensible approach to landscape planning. It is overtly a tool to improve AWF’s own ability to plan, monitor and learn across landscapes (often crossing national boundaries), but strives also to provide a framework also for partners to collaborate and support landscape-scale conservation. It has probably achieved more success in the former objective than the latter, although notably UWA have adopted HCP as the umbrella planning process to coordinate the activities of a range of partners working around the Mgahinga and Bwindi landscape. Box 2. What is the Heartland Concept? “Heartlands are large African landscapes of exceptional wildlife and nature where AWF works with a variety of partners, including local communities, governments and other resource users to conserve wild species, communities, and natural processes. Because Africa’s wildlife cannot be conserved everywhere, the great majority of AWF’s resources and efforts are invested in these Heartlands. The Heartland Conceptual Model is the process by which AWF prioritizes and selects Heartlands, then plans and implements activities in these priority landscapes.” The Virunga Heartland therefore covers Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. HCP Process aims to “integrate partners and their resources in a strategic and complimentary fashion” (project application p.11). Extract from the Heartland Conservation Plan (Virungas & Bwindi). Feb 2003 Workshop Report. Participation and adoption by stakeholders: Representatives of a wide array of Government Wildlife Management Authorities and Conservation NGOs and Projects have been involved during the planning process over the past 2 years, and the design of a monitoring plan. Although the HCP method explicitly proposes to involve all key partners, from the attendance list, notable absentees have been: o Local Government: only one District Environment Officer (DEO) from Kanungu was present at the initial planning process (3-4th Feb 2003), two DEOs (Kabale and Kisoro) during development of the monitoring programme (12th November 2004) and 1 District Community Development Officer and a Secretary for Environment in the Review meeting 2nd-4th August 2005). o The Forest Department / National Forestry Authority (NFA) who are the lead agency responsible for management of Echuya Central Forest Reserve (defined as part of Heartland); and o Private Sector who appear not to have attended any of the meetings. However, we concede that it is possible that some were invited and chose not to attend. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 21 It was therefore no great surprise to discover that the Local Government, who are deemed to be key partners, at the senior level remain largely unaware of, and do not understand the HCP process, or how they contribute to its implementation. Regular staff transfers within UWA have also resulted in rather limited understanding of the HCP process at the National Park senior management level in both Bwindi and Mgahinga. This points for the need for a standardised process at national level so that if people move from one landscape to another, they are familiar with the planning process, and format. R. 13. Standardise Landscape planning processes at national level for all PAs. Indicator A: Heartland Conservation Plan An HCP plan has been prepared, but has not been sufficiently circulated or internalised by all partners, other than some UWA staff, to be effective. A monitoring programme to track performance against the HCP has been in a state of permanent preparation (rather than implementation) over the project lifespan. This still needs a lot of refinement and development of indicators, as well as establishing on-the-ground monitoring systems. This will require a large investment of people and time – and therefore funds. ITFC is currently looking for funds for this (e.g., from MacArthur Foundation). The first review of progress against the plan was held during the Evaluation Mission in August 2005. While the review largely confirmed the validity of the planned activities, it identified many areas where no progress has been made in terms of implementation. The evaluation team perceive that more effort is being put into the development of a fully comprehensive plan than into its coordinated implementation. HCP should aim to become more strategic in nature, providing overview and direction rather than blueprints for action. Only the priority strategies need detailed planning by those who have accepted responsibility to implement actions on the ground. In depth planning of all components of a holistic development plan in the absence of those who have resources to implement is futile. Indicator B: Activities in HCP complete Targets were set to have successfully completed 75% of [all?] the planned activities. In the PMP this is diluted to measure the percentage of strategies and activities that are “under way” for 5 key threats. The indicator is thus at odds with the ambiguous target and is anyway unrealistic in the context of a long-term strategy to reduce threats, in which activities are probably never “complete”. In practise, it is hard to conclude that many of the planned activities in the HCP have been “completed”. Many are not yet under way. However, planned activities have been initiated for each of the 5 key threats. Their effectiveness is reviewed under IR2. Indicator C: Monitoring of Critical Conservation Threats Most potential threats appear to have been identified, although only a minority have been adequately addressed in project strategies of either IGCP/AWF or partners to date. The AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 22 key threats selected for targeting by the project in the Uganda Sector of the Virunga / Bwindi Heartland were: 1. Fire 2. Disease 3. Agricultural Conversion 4. Poaching 5. [lack of] Control/ownership Monitoring has not been a continuous process for many of the threats. The PMP has been irregularly updated and remained partially complete at the time of review. The design of an HCP Monitoring Framework has only just been completed, and assessment of changes over time of many critical threats is based largely on subjective opinion, rather than on evidence. That said, some of the identified HCP indicators are being monitored already as part of ongoing partner Research & Monitoring activities (especially ITFC Ecological Monitoring Programme and UWA’s Ranger Based Monitoring). Process The HCP process has been implemented at various levels: o Regional plan – developed 3rd –4th February 2003. o Uganda-specific plan – developed on 5th February 2003. Note that this was already 9 months into the 3-year programme. o Development of detailed monitoring plan for the HCP – 4 to 5 meetings held so far. o First major meeting to prepare a monitoring plan was held in November 2003. o Second major meeting to finalise the plan was held in November 2004. o Various other meetings have been held to develop the monitoring plan. Meeting to review the HCP was held on August 2nd 2005 (Evaluation Team Leader attended some of this). Impact National level – UWA and other partners have adopted the HCP process as their partner coordinating mechanism for the Gorilla Parks (Bwindi / Mgahinga). HCP has been used to inform the Annual Operational Plan for Bwindi and Mgahinga. Many field staffs of UWA and partners are not very clear on the HCP process in terms of its purpose or content. AWF had tentatively committed themselves to take a lead in implementing the HCP process, but insufficient resources (staff time) were allocated to ensure coordination. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 23 Issues During the evaluation, a workshop was held in Kabale (2nd – 4th August) to review the HCP process. Up to the Review meeting many stakeholders remained unaware of the HCP or uncertain as to how it was to be implemented, particularly in terms of involving local level partners. A questionnaire was designed to assess the impacts of the HCP. Key findings of the workshop and the assessment by HCP partners are shown in Annex 6. Plans need champions to convert into action, and HCP Plan has so far lacked clear leadership. It has so far been promoted by AWF on a sporadic basis and a sense of having a “stake” in the plan or being a partner has not been clearly instilled in all those institutions that were envisaged to take on responsibilities to implement the HCP. By being all-inclusive, the HCP almost reads as a plan for the sustainable development of the entire region. As such it looks both daunting and to some extent fails to recognise the limitations of its protagonists to implement the wide array of envisaged activities. As a result some partners risk taking on responsibilities that lie beyond their core competencies. For the conservation partners, the “think globally, act locally” mantra is equally relevant at the Landscape scale. The HCP process has been one of many trying to achieve a broader landscape approach: o The Albertine Rift strategic planning process (covering the entire Rift); o The Heartland Conservation Plan (taking a broader landscape approach to the Virunga/Bwindi section of the Rift) o The Transfrontier Management Plan (focussing on the Protected Areas); and o District Environment Action Plans (focussing on the Districts within Uganda). While there is a logical hierarchy of plans, this has probably resulted in planning fatigue and a diluted value of any one such plan. HCP Recommendations: R. 14 Review the range of planning processes that are being promoted in the region and identify commonalities and ways to harmonise processes and reduce the demand on scarce staff time of all partners (Local Govt, NGOs, UWA, Private Sector, Etc). R. 15 Review relevance and impacts of Heartland Conservation Planning to actual decision making processes (UWA, District Local Government, etc) on the ground. R. 16 Set up National & regional Heartland Coordination Forum that can meet periodically to review progress against the plan and ensure exchange of information, ideas, plans & progress reports. R. 17 The Chairmanship of the proposed Forum should be a position that is either rotated between partner institutions, or embedded permanently in a neutral national institution. R. 18 Produce the HCP “Plan” in Tabular / Wall-Poster format and distribute to all partners. The chart should allow partners to add or update the plan activities over time - pencilling in new activities and adding new partners where they have taken up responsibility to implement parts of the HCP. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 24 R. 19 HCP partners should collectively recruit and support the new position of a national “Heartlands Pacemaker” to coordinate implementation of the plan. Some key aspects of a new “Pacemaker’s” Scope of Work are given in Box 3 below. R. 20 Agree on coordination modalities between all key partners. A proposed organigramme is shown below in Figure 2. R. 21 Expand the HCP process to more effectively cover Echuya Forest Reserve and involve the National Forestry Authority in its implementation. IGCP focus is currently mainly on National Parks, not surprisingly given that the Gorillas are only in the parks, but Echuya is identified as part of the heartland. NFA have The “landscape” approach is important to keep an eye on the bigger picture, but partners should avoid taking on too many commitments that are beyond their specific core competences and/or that cannot be fulfilled. R. 23 Invest more effort in building a broader “conservation alliance” This alliance should aim to increase “buy-in” to the HCP from Local Govts, Private Sector and other Development Agencies (NGO and Government projects) around shared goals of regional conservation and development. This could be a key job of the “Pacemaker”. R. 24 Convene future HCP meetings around “key issues”. By following a “Key Issues” approach to future meetings specific experts can be invited thereby making more intensive use of their already over-stretched time. This modular approach to planning should result in much quicker results (i.e. an agreed issue-specific plan emerging from 1 meeting) rather than waiting three years for a perfect, and all-inclusive plan. Suggested topics for “key issue” planning modules include: o regional tourism development plan (plan already prepared), o gorilla-human health issues” (already done); o problem animal management and vermin control strategies; o promoting sustainable agricultural practises; o Ranger Based Monitoring; o Developing / Expanding role of Frontline Community Institutions (e.g. HuGo). AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 25 Figure 2. Suggested Organigramme for Heartland Coordination Uganda - Site Level Heartland Coordination Committee Representative of Partner Organisation (rotating) (Chairman) National Heartland “Pacemaker” / Coordinator (Secretary) Representatives of all HCP partners Members Kabale DLG Designated District Liaison Person Kisoro DLG Designated District Liaison Person Kanungu DLG Designated District Liaison Person HCP Partner Org. 1 Designated Liaison Person HCP Partner Org. 2 Designated Liaison Person HCP Partner Org. 2 Designated Liaison Person Rwanda - Site Level Heartland Coordination Committee DRC - Site Level Heartland Coordination Committee Regional Heartland Coordination Committee Box 3. Suggested key elements of Scope of work for a National Heartland “Pacemaker” 1. Compile all information on each partners’ planned and completed activities; 2. Inform all partners of each other’s respective activities; 3. Promote coordination of planning and implementation of activities; 4. Liaise with all stakeholders to win their support for the plan; 5. Lobby 3rd party organisations (Local Governments, NAADS, other Donor projects, Development NGOs such as Africare, etc) to take up more activities that support the conservation of the landscape as a whole, as identified in the HCP. 6. Monitor performance against the national “heartland monitoring plan”. 7. Act as secretary to the “Heartland Coordination Committee” 8. Report to the incumbent Committee Chairperson. N.B. the pacemaker and associated secretariat could be housed by the respective partner institution that currently holds the Chair and could rotate over time. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 26 6.2 Key Strategies for Threat Abatement Implemented (IR2) The indicator for this IR was weak, reading “Number of key strategies implemented”. Clearly this does not reflect their effectiveness. Threats were first identified and ranked in terms of their severity. Table 1. Ranking of the 15 critical threats to the Landscape Critical and major threats Ranking for GVL (2003) Ranking for Uganda 2005 1. Agricultural conversion (& resulting habitat loss) Very High Very high 2. Over fishing using poor methods High High 3. Nutrient overload & erosion (agricultural practices) High Very high 4. Cattle/livestock grazing Medium Low 5. Charcoal production/ fuelwood collection Medium High 6. Poaching for both food and trophies Medium Medium 7. Harvesting of timber, bamboo and NTFP Medium Medium 8. Insecurity/conflict Medium Low 9. Pollution/waste management Medium Medium 10. Clay & sand mining/brick production Medium Medium 11. Resettlement & displacement of people/urbanisation Medium Low 12. Fire Medium Medium 13. Disease Low Medium 14. Need for water by population Low High 15. Roads Low Low The project selected to work on those in bold and red. It also identified [lack of] “control and ownership” over natural resources, though it was not very clearly explained how this is seen as a threat. The team found it difficult to directly link the PMP indicators and the threat reduction activities identified in the Annual work plans. The HCP Review Meeting (Aug 2005) has provided some measure of the degree to which different threat abatement strategies identified have been implemented, (see Table 2). The analysis of progress was conducted by the IGCP Team. We present it as the basis for the discussion that follows. The effectiveness of threat reduction strategies is dealt with better at the Purpose level for which the indicators include “Reduction in key threats” and were evaluated at the End of Project HCP review meeting (attended by the Evaluation Team Leader). There is also an explicit objective in the project design that all activities implemented under IR6 are seen to be key strategies for threat abatement. Achievements in reducing threats through actions implemented undertaken under IR2 are therefore difficult to evaluate in isolation. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 27 Table 2. Progress report on Threat Reduction Strategies (HCP, August 2005) Source of threat Strategy Progress report Developed a fire management plan for BMCA Trained park and community representatives in fire management techniques (2 trainings); Supported UWA to review fire management plan after one year. Fire Prevention and control of fire outbreaks: Develop and implement a fire management plan Procured some basic fire fighting equipment. Working with District local govts of Kanungu, Kisoro and Kabale UWA, MGVP and CTPH, developed a multi-sectoral Public Health and Conservation framework. Implemented some of the components of the framework, e.g. Health education, clean up exercises, drama shows through CTPH, the relevant district departments and UWA. Supported Health radio talk shows esp. by Kanungu district Disease Develop integrated disease prevention control programme IGCP/AWF didn’t do much…. It is the responsibility of MGVP! Agricultural Conversion Work with partners to improve farming practices Not much work done. Alternative livelihood options to reduce agricultural pressure on the land. Land protection, which includes easements, leases and purchases. See Income Generating Activities listed under “Poaching”; Buffer zone management support in Nkuringo; Conducted income and enterprise survey around BMCA as a baseline Supported Mushrooms growing for 80 women groups Supported Handicrafts training and marketing for 30 groups around BMCA Supported formation of one Beekeepers group. Supported training for 263 association members in 6 parishes. Procured processing plant for honey Planted bamboo in MGNP, involving about 500 households. Supported formation and institutional development of MCDO. Raised funds for improving enterprise facilities for MCDO Supported formation and training for NCDF, Negotiated MOU with UWA that granted exclusive rights of six gorilla permits. Assisted to identify funding for Nkuringo ecolodge. Working with NCDF and UWA to identify private sector partner for the ecolodge Improve and diversify income generating/livelihood options on particular target groups e.g. Batwa, Echuya communities BCDRA. Developed Business plan Sourced Expertise for infrastructure improving plan Organized Study tour for 12 community reps to Kenya for Community/ Private Sector partnerships Strengthened RBM that tracked patrol coverage etc. Information fed into PA management decision-making process. Supported training in RBM, computer use for park staff, intelligence gathering. Strengthen efficiency of law enforcement and improve law re￾enforcement capacity. Provided various equipment for patrols Poaching Reduce market value and demand of animal parts (CITES regulations-enforcement) Supported sensitization workshop for stakeholders e.g. customs, judiciary, local leadership on illegal trade in WL Control/ Ownership Work with partners to review natural resource management practices Buffer zone management activities in Nkuringo AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 28 Threat of Disease A framework was developed to integrate human, wildlife and livestock health. Its development involved the inputs from all three health sectors. The objective has been to mitigate the risk of transmission of diseases between any three of these sectors. Of all areas of the Project this is perhaps where Local Govt have reported being most involved. Other NGOs were also involved (the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project). Implementation of the framework has included: o Health education is being conducted through Conservation through Public Health (part funded by IGCP/AWF but not from the USAID grant). o Clean-up exercise within the 6 adjacent parishes where Gorillas exit the park. o Health monitoring of human, wildlife, and livestock health. o Ranger-based monitoring. Rangers identify any unusual signs and report to vets who then make professional assessment. o Fund raising to continue supporting the framework. To date the new framework and response mechanism has not been tested. In the time available, the evaluation team was not able to assess whether such a mechanism is effective. Threat of Fire Fire fighting training has been completed with support from the Dept of Interior, US Government, and guidelines for fire control developed. Management recommendations have been developed for both Bwindi and Mgahinga NPs. Indicators of success are best provided under IR5.1 E. Fires are weather dependent. 1999 was a particularly dry year that experienced a large number of fires. After a severe fire season in 1999 (a very dry year), there have been many fewer fires (none in Bwindi in 2001 or 2002, and only 2 in 2003, and 3 in 2004). Notably the area damaged per fire has reduced in recent years, and there are less fires caused by wild honey collection. Community response to fires is much better. People are much more willing to go and help fight fires than before. Improving agricultural Practises The HCP process, in its latest review of Threats (August 2005) again ranked as “very high” the combined threats of: 1. Nutrient overload and erosion (agricultural practices), and 2. Agricultural conversion (and resulting habitat loss) Strategies were then developed (Feb 2003) for addressing the threat, largely through linking up with other agencies – see Table 3 below. Some activities have been reported by AWF/IGCP as addressing this issue, but in practise they are actually referring to reclamation of agricultural land to extend the park, which does not really address the threat of poverty induced by depleted soils in the surrounding landscape. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 29 The HCP review process itself concluded that: “not much was done with agricultural conversion (Working with partners to improve agricultural practices)” due to o Lack of expertise o Districts had no resources o Programmes like NAADS were not operating in parishes next to the Pas” We have to conclude that effective strategies to address this threat remains “not implemented”, but also acknowledge that the solution lies beyond the resources available to the project itself. Table 3. Strategies identified to deal with the threat of agricultural conversion. Critical source of threat Strategy Actions (rank with explanation) Responsibility Agricultural Conversion Agroforestry Intensify and diversify agricultural practices Develop alternative IGAs Enforce/enhance/develop laws/by laws prohibiting cultivation of steep slopes Restoration of natural forest e.g. MGNP, Nyundo Land acquisition in critical ecosystems Land concession Advocacy for correction of irregularities in law enforcement Diversify agricultural strategies beyond agriculture Agroforestry – provide inputs and skills (e.g. Seed multiplication centres) Partner with key projects/institutions (e.g. IDEA) Assess viability and promote IGAs Advocate for development of relevant legislation Identify critical ecosystems and raise funds Partnership and networking with relevant players Assess viability and promote feasible options ICRAF, NARO, FD L.Govts: Govt programmes e.g. NAADs L.Govts, NGOS, Private sector Environmental lawyers/LGs UWA, NGOs, Wetlands programme Environmental lawyers, NGOs LGs, NGOs, Private Sector Table 3 shows that the intention in the HCP was indeed to engage other agricultural development organisations to take on this huge challenge, and this was repeated in Annual Work-plans. Meetings with potential partners have been held but there is scanty evidence that these partners are now implementing activities that help reduce the threats as an outcome of the negotiations. An exception is PRIME/West that has taken up responsibility to implement some of the activities (promotion of new buffer crops, and reverse-slope terraces), though these are more pilots than reality just yet. There are no monitoring results that provide a measure of changes in soil loss or soil fertility, so even if there had been some activities, it would have been difficult to monitor “impacts”. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 30 Improving Natural Resources Management. This approach to threat abatement is mainly tackled under 6.1. More analysis is provided in that section. Criteria for selecting Conservation-Business Ventures included the need for a conservation “logic” to the new enterprises, i.e. to ensure that they in some way address threats, by: substituting for natural resources/products from PAs by increasing on-farm supplies; e.g. o bee-keeping, mushrooms, bamboo cultivation; reducing costs of conservation (crop raiding / exclusion from PA); e.g. o Human Gorilla Conflict Resolution – HuGo; High value crops (which are unpalatable to wildlife) in Buffer zones; o Community campgrounds / tourism; Key natural resources that were ranked as being subject to high threats (see Table 1) but have not been addressed by the project are firewood and the need for water from the park. [Access to Water in the PA is seen as a threat largely due to the tendency for people who go to the park for water to also engage in other (illegal) activities and risking disease transmission between Human and Gorilla populations.] Poaching The opinion of the Evaluation Team is that “law enforcement” of in-park rules is the only strategy that clearly addresses poaching. This is a necessary but insufficient approach to addressing one of the key threats to biodiversity in the Park. Other strategies that are reported in Table 2 as addressing the source of the threats are much more limited and doubtful as to their impacts in terms of threat reduction, and in terms of reaching the actual socio-economic groups that are responsible for poaching. The underlying causes have not been addressed in the project design – i.e. o ‘poachers’ as a group have not been identified and approached as one of the key “threateners” and their reasons for hunting not analysed. o Specific threat reduction strategies to reduce poaching and to address the underlying incentives and disincentives to poachers. o Poachers are in some cases (perhaps many more than realised) excluded from potential benefits of the project. For example, according to explanations given by community members, the HuGo Groups explicitly use an individual’s history of hunting as a criteria for exclusion from the Group. Many of the CBVs claimed to be addressing ‘poaching’ are aimed at women’s groups. However, women typically do not poach. o On the other hand, women are probably the main firewood collectors but there are no activities targeted at increasing on-farm supplies, although bamboo is used for firewood to a limited extent. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 31 Control/Ownership. The threat identified was “insufficient control / ownership” of natural resources, in the form of “denial of ownership rights, undermining of local knowledge and unfair negotiation”, presumably of the terms of agreements made relating to access to park resources and benefits. The main strategies have been to engage the communities surrounding the Nkuringo Sector of Bwindi in the management of the buffer zone and in the negotiation of the terms of a forthcoming Eco-lodge with UWA and potential private sector partners. Recommendations R. 26 Threats analysis should go beyond simply identifying ‘threats’ to quantifying their significance, and more clearly understand who are the “threateners”, and what drives them; R. 27 Consider hiring a social scientist to explore the root causes of the key threats in more detail under the ITFC research programme; R. 29 Criteria for inclusion of individuals in CBVs such as HuGo should ensure that hunters and other “threateners” who wish to “reform” are not excluded. However, continued membership should indeed be conditional on giving up illegal activities and “staying clean”. R. 30 Include monitoring of soil fertility in the zone surrounding the National Parks; R. 31 Engage other project partners to specifically target agricultural development and resource conservation in the Zone immediately surrounding the NPs; 6.3 Regional Frameworks Strengthened (IR3) The first indicator for success is the “number and type of frameworks strengthened”. The AWF/IGCP regional partners have worked hard to develop and implement regional frameworks and this is an area where the project has made some good progress. o Regional policy frameworks were evaluated although it is still necessary for each of the governments concerned to take up the recommendations and implement. o The Heartland Conservation Planning process has brought together partners from all three neighbouring countries (Rwanda, DRC and Uganda). o The project has supported a “Transfrontier Secretariat” which builds on an MoU that between the three country PAAs (ICCN, ORTNP, UWA), and has been developing a “Transfrontier Management Plan” (TMP). At a meeting held in late July 2005, it was agreed to merge the TMP process with the Albertine Rift Planning process. o Quarterly regional meetings have been held between staff at the executive level in each country, supported financially and technically by IGCP. o A tourism master plan for the Virunga Volcano region has been developed. o A Regional Tourism Action plan has been developed which identified actions to operationalise tourism across Rwanda. Uganda and DRC. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 32 o Discussions relating to harmonisation of fees and gorilla permit numbers have been held (although the consensus was to “agree to disagree”!). The second indicator is “Number of key actions addressing critical threats”. This seems to reflect more on IR2 than this IR. The PMP lists under “Actual” [performance] the type and number of regional meetings held as “key actions”. While the PMP shows targets for this indicator to have been greatly exceeded, the indicator could be further improved by measuring the extent to which actions identified in regional meetings have been implemented. Impacts: The increasing sense of common purpose and “partnership” between the PA authorities and project partners between the three countries is one of the key achievements of the Project, although the IGCP/AWF contribution is one of many that are aiming to build such alliances. In spite of some setbacks and strains on relations (such as the disappearance of the Nyakagezi Group from Mgahinga NP to the Rwandan sector of the Virungas), there is a perceived commitment to develop mitigating measures to address them. Discussions go as far as sharing revenues between countries, although these would be tough to implement. Recommendations: R. 32 Appoint one organisation to spearhead the continuation of regional cooperation activities. R. 33 Develop mechanisms for reinforcing legal validity and implementation of decisions taken at regional forums in the respective countries. 6.4 National and Regional Policy improved (IR4). Various activities have been implemented under this IR. The indicator is “Policies supportive of conservation (number of policies under development or completed)”. The target of “two policies” does not reflect the quality or significance of the policies to be developed (and - one would hope - improved), nor is the level of impact that the project itself has had on them. For the purposes of the review we have chosen to assess the level of impact on the policy development process. Policy Review The National Policy Review report was completed in April last year (Wabenoha, 2004). Findings have been presented to the National GRASP committee (most of the members being within UWA) but as yet the report has not gone any further than this. Reasons given are that UWA are waiting for top management to review and adopt findings before releasing the report to a wider audience. No impacts have yet been achieved in terms of “improving” the national or regional policies reviewed in this report. UWA senior management report that the policy review is only now taking place (September 2005) and that this report will feed into this process. The impact of the AWF/IGCP review can only be assessed after this is completed. R. 34 Ensure IGCP/AWF have active role in the ongoing Wildlife policy review process. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 33 Economic Valuation An economic valuation has been conducted with three stated intentions: o Provide a baseline from which to further refine and/or expand on the current study o Draw policy conclusions o Explore the economic impact of possible interventions After a first phase of field data collection (2003-04) and publication of a draft report in 2004, AWF headquarters requested for further data collection and analysis relating to local benefits and a new survey was recently completed (early 2005). The final report is still awaited from the researchers. The evaluation team had access only to a draft academic paper written on the basis of the study. The key findings are summarised in the Abstract. Overall, gorilla tourism generates USD21.2 million per year (2000-01) in benefits, of which US$1.1 million was gorilla-related tourism income (Park Revenues for BINP/MGNP) in 2001- 02. This has since risen to USD 2.13 million in 2004-05. Distribution of gross net economic benefits is as follows: o 53% accrues to the national level o 41% accrues to the international level o 6% accrues to the local level Official Tourism statistics showed that for the year 2000- 2001, gorilla viewing operated at 41% of full capacity, suggesting potential for increasing revenues, with a maximum attainable value of US$51.7 Million a year2 . Box 4. Abstract – Hatfield Economics Paper The Virunga and Bwindi afro-montane forests of eastern/central Africa are best known as home to the mountain gorilla Gorilla beringei beringei. A study was undertaken to estimate the economic value of the protected forests; and the distribution of benefits and costs between local, national and international stakeholders. Results suggested that the forests are generating positive benefits - both tangible and intangible - relative to costs; but that benefits are overwhelmingly accruing to the international community, with little-to-no benefit accruing to those countries containing the protected areas. The implications are that the international community should be paying a greater share for the benefits it enjoys; and that the real engine of development - and sustainable forest conservation - is likely to involve investment into local smallholder agricultural livelihoods. N.B. Highlighting is that of Evaluation team. The results of the report have been presented at an IGCP Regional meeting, and a meeting of the International Association of Travel Agencies (IATA) held in Munyonyo, Kampala in 2004. UWA were represented at both meetings, and the Ministry of Tourism Trade & Industry at 2 n.b. IR6.2 has the objective of improving the linking of GVL products to regional and international markets. Activities under 6.2 have not obviously focussed on reducing the shortfall in the potential sales of Gorilla tracking permits. This is in part due to IGCP’s position on numbers of permits and the health and behaviour impacts of too many visitors tracking Gorillas on daily basis. Local 6% National 53% International 41% AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 34 the latter, but neither meeting were intended to be a forum for policy review at the Uganda level. Until the final report is available, it will not be possible for IGCP/AWF to use the findings to lobby for Policy improvements. All the planned activities have been completed but impacts of the recommendations made have yet to be felt since the Wildlife Statute is still in the early stages of a process of review and the Tourism Bill is with cabinet. Recommendation: R. 35 Summarise and disseminate the findings of the economic study to key decision makers with clear policy recommendations as to how to increase local and national level revenues. Equitable Distribution of Costs and benefits of Conservation The Economic consultancy has tried to show how the distribution of benefits enjoyed by international, national and local communities is somehow disproportionate compared to the share of the costs borne by each. It argues that one of the costs of the Parks is the forfeit of potential agricultural land by the local communities. While the evaluation team agrees that the overall economic value of the National Parks should consider the opportunity costs to the “nation” of not converting them to agriculture, we disagree that this cost is actually borne by the “local” community. The net effect of the consultant’s assertion is to show a disproportionate amount of costs being borne by the forest adjacent communities. Analysis should have been focussed on the real costs of living next to a park – the costs of crop raiding resulting from problem animals3 (such as Elephant, Gorilla, Buffalo) and vermin4 and compared these with the advantages (opportunities to benefit from tourism, access to multiple use zones, clean water, and so on). However, the report states that data gathered on crop losses were exaggerated and inconsistent, and therefore not used for the analysis. While national & international bodies contribute significantly to the costs of conservation in Uganda, the WB financed PAMSU Project that provides the bulk of financial support to UWA is actually a loan, and not a grant, and thus will ultimately have to be repaid by the people of Uganda. Comparing how the relative costs and benefits of conservation are distributed internationally is thus by no means straightforward. R. 36 A follow up study on economic valuation should determine more realistically how the relative costs and benefits of conservation are distributed, locally, nationally and internationally. Impacts 3 “Problem animal” includes any animal which poses a danger to human life or property (Wildlife Statute, 1996); 4 Vermin are legally defined as “bushpigs, Baboons and Vervet Monkeys” by declaration of the UWA Board. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 35 The Economic Valuation report remains a draft. IGCP/AWF await the final report to distribute and present specifically to policy makers and senior managers in the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The main value of the report to date has been to provide additional support for IGCP/AWF’s arguments to increase the share of revenues from gorilla-based tourism allocated to local communities. Key interventions in this regard include successfully lobbying UWA to: o Allocate a proportion ($9) of Gorilla revenues to Local Communities (and not lumped into the national revenue sharing pot). o Allocate the six new gorilla permits for Nkuringo to the local Community. The Community do not get the revenue from these permits, but are free to negotiate terms of a joint venture with Private Sector investor who will build a lodge in the Nkuringo Sector of Bwindi (see Section 6.6 on IR6.1 for more details). Tourism Bill IGCP/AWF had input into the draft Tourism Bill, but it is not yet clear to what extent the proposals have been incorporated. This Bill is now with cabinet and has not been promulgated in Parliament yet. While the evaluation team has not reviewed the Bill or the level of influence achieved by IGCP/AWF, as with many Bills, it is understood to be a broad framework that will be implemented through regulations. The Draft Tourism Regulations have not yet been made available to stakeholders and it is not clear what stage the draft Regulations have reached. However, as always, the devil is in the detail and the key implementing mechanisms will be within the regulations. Recommendation: R. 40 IGCP/AWF should review the draft Tourism Regulations, once available, and carefully and strategically influence their final form and content. In particular focus should be on ensuring that tight mechanisms ensure that: a. the impacts of tourism on the gorillas are minimised; b. the positive impacts on local socio-economic development are optimised, and negative impacts mitigated as far as possible; c. appropriate and fair revenue sharing mechanisms are established; d. infrastructural planning is done in ways such that the aesthetic and environmental impacts are minimised. e. Regional tourism across national borders is facilitated; Other Policy Issues There are a number of key policy issues that have not specifically been targeted by IGCP/AWF in terms of their listed Main Activities. This does not mean to say that the AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 36 project has not contributed to the ongoing debate or undertaken background research to support policy recommendations, but that it has not set performance indicators against which to assess impact. The following policies are considered to be of critical importance for the future: o Revenue Sharing Policy o Problem Animal Management and Vermin Control. o Gorilla Tracking Permit Numbers and better means of enforcing associated “Gorilla Rules” o Tourism Bill and associated Regulations (in draft) o Wildlife Statute and associated Regulations / Schedules. General Recommendations on Policy issues: R. 42 Develop Policy Working Group of key representatives from stakeholder institutions around specific policies, to maximise opportunities for exchange of experiences and ideas, and coordinate lobbying efforts. R. 43 Actively engage with the Private Sector & Civil Society throughout the Policy review process through face-to-face meetings, newsletters, media events, etc. 6.5 PAs serving as ecological & economic core areas of the Landscape (IR5) The second initial problem statement in the grant application read: “Insufficient capacity in the parks prevents them from serving as core areas of the landscape in a sustainable fashion.” This IR was designed to increase capacity and sustainability of the parks. Overall the indicator of success for IR5 is the “Revenue to UWA and the community campground” and the target was to increase revenues by 10% per annum. UWA revenues from the gorilla parks have increased from USh1.9billion to USh3.0billion in the first two years (see table below). Buhoma Community Campground revenues have increased from 94million in 2003-04 to 120million in 2004-05. Table 4. Revenues to UWA from Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks Year Revenues (UgShs) Revenues (USD) Percent Increase on previous year 2001-02 1.936 Billion UgShs $1,139,084 - 2002-03 2.596 Billion UgShs $1,782,941 34% 2003-04 3.031 Billion UgShs $1,526,862 16% 2004-05 3.621 Billion UgShs $2,130,000 19.5 This represents “target met and exceeded”, but it is difficult to attribute this solely to project activities, but it still played an important part. However the IGCP has been involved in the development of gorilla tourism since it’s inception in the early 90s. IGCP has supported AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 37 habituating of gorillas, development of booking rules and regulations, harmonising of tariffs etc. It is understood that revenues increased as a result of: ¾ An increase in the tariffs that came out of a review of tariffs conducted with the support of IGCP/AWF. ¾ One of the Buhoma groups split in to, so UWA gained a habituated group there. ¾ A general increase in visitor numbers. Except for the training of Guides, many of the other activities that were targeted at improving the visitor facilities in the park have not yet been completed so it is anticipated that visitor satisfaction and revenues will increase further when Visitor Centres are complete. This IR was divided into two sub-IRs: o Priority Actions of Bwindi and Mgahinga GMPs implemented (IR5.1) o UWA Management decisions strengthened by monitoring and research (IR5.2). 6.5.1 Priority Actions of Bwindi and Mgahinga GMPs implemented (IR5.1) IGCP / AWF staff are routinely invited to attend the Annual Operational Planning meeting held by UWA, in which UWA and partners agree on their respective inputs. This is the mechanism by which IGCP/AWF identify which actions to implement. Equipment Substantial amounts of field equipment (sleeping bags and mats, tents, rain gear, binoculars, and GPSs) were provided under this USAID grant to UWA (verified by copy of letter from UWA, 30th January 2004) confirming receipt of equipment – seen by Consultant). Field staff expressed their appreciation and assurance that these facilitate their field activities such as gorilla tracking, law enforcement and ranger based monitoring. Signage Signage for the Bwindi & Mgahinga parks has been provided, as witnessed by a widespread array of clear signboards around the network of roads. Delays were experienced due to the long time taken by UWA to approve the signage plan and design. Minor issues were reported relating to a few signs missing and/or put in the wrong place. These are being rectified. Since the signs have been put up, UWA have decided to standardise signs throughout the country and are proposing to replace all the signs recently installed around Bwindi / Mgahinga. This is no fault of IGCP/AWF, but represents a waste of resources within an already tight UWA budget. Recommendations: R. 44 UWA should consider either leaving present signage around Bwindi & Mgahinga to save funds for other more important activities or phasing the new signage to change BINP/MGNP signs at end of the process. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 38 Visitor Centres / Infrastructure The Visitor centres and interpretation plans for Bwindi & Mgahinga NPs has been “pending” since 1992 when the Tourism Development Plan was written. Construction of the Visitor Centre at Mgahinga has just begun – foundations and slab were being laid during our field visit. Delays are due to various design changes recommended by AWF and final approval from USAID. A design was also submitted to UWA upgrade the Bwindi Buhoma Gate and Visitor facilities and Mgahinga gate plan, but UWA approval delayed for so long that the project rightly decided to allocate the funds to other priorities. Other sources of funding for Buhoma are being explored. The team did not evaluate the plans for either the visitor centre or the Gate Plan as this was not their area of competence! The contractors are confident that they will complete the construction by September 2005. Figure 3. Architectural Drawing of Visitor Centre, Mgahinga Figure 4. Mgahinga Visitor Centre: Progress so far AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 39 Interpretation has been designed and some artwork has been already initiated. Nkuringo Trails Development A new trail network has been developed at Nkuringo under this phase of the Project as one component of implementation of the Tourism Development Plan for that area. Weather and time did not permit the team to visit the trails established but they are clearly a key component of being able to initiate the Gorilla Tracking in Nkuringo even before the Eco-Lodge is built. There is a basic campground there and some tourists are already coming, thus providing a source of revenue from spin-off activities for the local community. Training The Project has supported various training programmes for Park staff, and Park adjacent communities: o Fire management and control; o Guide training in Customer Care, Natural History, and Birding - among others. Generally the training has been well received. Senior staff has been trained to also provide mentoring to junior staff, so that a more “on-the-job” training culture is now developing. Much of the above training was given in back-to-back sessions in one intensive block. Senior staff felt that it was difficult for more junior staff to absorb all training in one go, without chance to practise newly acquired skills. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 40 Various observations and suggestions were gathered from Park management and IGCP staff on training, which we have incorporated into our recommendations below. An in-house review of training impacts has been conducted. Some concerns were raised as to the effectiveness and objectivity of such self-evaluation. Recommendations: R. 47 Spread the training over a longer period in future to allow staff to assimilate; R. 48 Build capacity of senior staff to take on mentoring / in-house training role; R. 49 Consider contracting evaluation of the impacts of training to professional organisations rather than conducting “in-house”. 6.5.2 UWA management decisions strengthened by monitoring and research (IR5.2). The Institute for Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) has provided an impressive range of advice to UWA management over the past three years, based on solid research findings (see Annex 7, extracted from the PMP). There exists a strong and positive relationship between ITFC and UWA / NFA. Regular presentations of findings are made to UWA Park management at local level and many findings and recommendations have been incorporated into PA management The Research Plan is based largely on research needs defined in the General Management Plans for the National Parks, at an initial workshop carried out under this project and in the HCP monitoring plan. Various levels of decision have been supported, for example: o Key strategic decisions, such as the number of gorilla permits that are compatible with conservation objectives; o Resource allocation decisions such as how to deal with exotic species within the Park; o Day to day decisions such as targeting of patrol efforts; Again the indicator is somewhat simplistic: “number of decisions influenced”. More important is the ‘gravity’ of each decision taken and the extent to which it has actually been influenced by findings of ITFC Research / UWA monitoring and the lobbying efforts of IGCP as a whole. A revised format for assessing the impacts of research on decision-making was proposed by the team. ITFC is clearly under-resourced to implement effectively the entire research agenda it had identified. This is in part due to the reduction in budget allocated in the USAID grant to IGCP for this project overall without a corresponding reduction in research targets. It is also necessary for ITFC to priority KEY decisions that need to be targeted with adequate research findings to inform the more critical decisions that influence conservation. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 41 R. 50 Consider contributing to core funding of ITFC to ensure long term support for monitoring and research on priority issues. UWA Board Decision to increase the number of Gorilla Tracking Permits A decision to increase permit numbers per habituated group from 6 to 8 tourists each was taken by the UWA board in July and announced during this evaluation (August 2005). This decision goes against the advice of IGCP and what they believed to be a consensus of wider stakeholders, including UWA senior management. Given the central conservation target of the IGCP - the Mountain Gorilla – this is a substantial disappointment to the IGCP partners. Two contrasting “position papers” were prepared: o A Briefing Note issued by IGCP5 o A Briefing Note issued by UWA6 . Both briefing notes quote the same sources of information and research findings to argue in quite opposite directions regarding the future allocation of Gorilla Permits. The IGCP Brief points to emerging evidence of negative impacts on gorilla health and behaviour, and recommends UWA should wait until research results have been analysed more conclusively before increasing gorilla permit numbers. The scope of this evaluation does not allow a full analysis of the decision making process, or the virtues of the final decision made by UWA, but it is clear that in this case, Either: o IGCP did not make their research findings recommendations available to the right target audiences in a convincing and timely manner. Or: o UWA senior management have wrongly interpreted the ITFC research findings and corresponding IGCP recommendations o or have been persuaded in favour of the financial and political arguments for increasing the permits at the expense of the No.1 “ecotourism principle” outlined in the original Tourism Plan for BINP (see inside front cover of this report); Concerted lobbying efforts were indeed made by IGCP partners to advise UWA senior management. But IGCP’s influence over key decisions seems to have been pushed aside in favour of other interests. IGCP and partners have invested an enormous amount of resources in setting up the Gorilla tracking over the years. They also have repeatedly expressed apparently valid concerns 5 “Gorilla Permit Numbers in Bwindi Impenetrable NP” - IGCP recommendations, April 2005. 6 “UWA increases gorilla tracking tourists from six to eight persons”- UWA Board decision, 22nd July 2005 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 42 about it’s potential to substantially increase the risk to Gorilla health and conservation. They have been undertaking long-term research to quantify the impacts of tourism on gorillas, but conclusive evidence of negative impacts has been slow to emerge or be published in compelling form for decision makers. This is an area where more IGCP investment can be made to speed up research procedures, and results dissemination. It is critical to target the final decision makers (i.e. the UWA Board, rather than just the UWA senior management) in effective lobbying campaigns so that it is impossible for them to escape up to date scientific research findings. Lobbying is a different skill from research, and to a large extent is not ITFC’s mandate. We recommend a review of the way in which IGCP lobbies decision makers in Uganda (and perhaps the other countries in the Virunga Heartland) on key issues, with an objective of professionalizing its lobbying role. Article 8(3) of the Wildlife statute states “The board may appoint a technical committee to advise it on subjects relating to wildlife management”. The GRASP Committee (chaired by UWA) was set up to design a National GRASP Action Plan for Uganda (as for each of the 13 range states). It does not specifically have a mandate to advise the board, nor did it provide advice to the Board about the impacts of increased tourism on Gorillas. One option to consider is to modify the mandate of the GRASP committee to take on a technical advisory role. Recommended Lobbying targets: In any future phase of funding, IGCP and other projects and conservation NGOs should: R. 51 Speed up and consolidate research on the impacts of Gorilla-Tracking on Gorilla Health and conservation and present a stronger case for its recommendations; R. 54 Lobby for 1) a technical committee to be established specifically to advise the UWA Board on key issues relating to Gorilla / Great Ape Conservation and related tourism and 2) to try to obtain seats on it. R. 55 Prioritise research that will inform key forthcoming UWA management decisions. Forthcoming decisions should be identified in advance and ranked in terms of how critical or “strategic”, they are for conservation. R. 57 Analyse UWA’s decision-making process which resulted in an increase number of Gorilla Permits in terms of: o the research findings that backed up the IGCP recommendations; o the lobbying approach that was used by IGCP and ITFC – who was actually targeted? – and were they the final decision makers?; o how AUTO (association of Ugandan Tour Operators) and/or others persuaded the board to increase permit numbers rather than take the strong IGCP recommendation to the contrary, at least while awaiting the results of more detailed research; o The reasons why the board reached the decision finally taken; AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 43 It is anticipated that a number of lessons can be learned from such a review. R. 58 Further simplify key recommendations emerging from research and seek new channels to present the message to those actually making the final decision. R. 59 Inform other stakeholders (such as tourism associations and the relevant media) of the position of IGCP to raise public awareness of critical conservation issues and win more popular support for IGCP’s recommendations. ITFC have reasonably argued that they made substantial efforts to provide the facts to UWA but that the recommendations made little difference given that UWA are under considerable pressures to increase Gorilla Permits: o >50% of UWA revenues come from the Gorilla Parks, most of it from permits; o Tour Operators have openly lobbied hard for more permits to increase own earnings. Instead, ITFC argue that without additional core funding to UWA from the donors, with conditions attached that restrict the increase in gorilla permits, it will be very difficult for IGCP to persuade UWA of the merits of their recommendations. R. 60. Lobby USAID and other donors to core-finance UWA, and support business models that expand and diversify tourism away from Gorillas and that take a more holistic approach to supporting UWA’s institutional and financial sustainability. Recommended future research priorities R. 61 Research the effectiveness of UWA Policy towards problem animal control (a key source of conflict between PAAs and local communities) R. 62 Research the socio-economic impacts of tourism development in Buhoma, e.g. HIV, prostitution resulting largely from increased security presence in the area, and specific impacts on the Batwa, who are being regularly called away from their fields to “perform” for tourist groups on the cultural walks. R. 63 Continue research into impacts of tourism on gorillas. In particular research should investigate options that reduce impacts on gorillas but maintain valuable revenue. R. 65 Research potential of linking the range of benefits provided by conservation bodies to location-specific indicators of conservation performance by particular communities. 6.6 Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in the GVL (IR6) An array of Conservation Business Ventures (CBVs) have been initiated and supported in this phase of the project. Time was limited to evaluate properly these initiatives in the field, either in terms of their viability as “businesses” or, more importantly, in terms of their actual impacts on conservation against the unstated assumption in the project design that CBVs can effectively improve conservation behaviours and reduce threats (see Section 5.1). A comprehensive analysis of the impacts of 15 years of Integrated Conservation and Development Programmes has recently been completed (ITFC et al. 2005), in which a number AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 44 of highly qualified researchers invested substantial research effort to learn whether ICD interventions have or have not achieved their stated objectives. Their findings are summarised at the end of this section and represent a much more comprehensive analysis of the conservation impacts of different interventions. Our analysis in this report is therefore far from exhaustive and provides an overview of progress against stated project implementation targets as the basis for some further discussion and recommendations. Two indicators were provided for IR6 overall (which emulates SO7): o Household income based on household assets o Household income based on cash inflows From the PMP there is some evidence of increasing incomes derived from support to existing / new CBVs. There are no indicators to assess the potential impacts that the CBVs have had on conservation behaviours. Baseline data collected on household assets, but apparently NEMS agreed (verbally) that project leave this to national scale monitoring system (UBOS). Baseline was also collected on household incomes (cash flow) and the project proposed conducting a repeat survey at end of project. This has not yet happened due to lack of funds and the short time frame in between surveys. 6.6.1 Opportunities for CBVs identified and developed (IR6.1) Indicators for this IR include: o Number of on-going CBVs operating on sound business principles o Number of new enterprises established [and operational]; o Number of people employed by CBVs o Value of support to social and economic activities o Annual percentage increase in returns While it is possible to count the numbers of on-going CBVs, it is more difficult for the team to assess the ‘soundness’ of their business principles, in part because many are still in their infancy, and because they are currently still benefiting from substantial subsidies from the project. Only when they are actually forced to stand on their own two feet, without support, will their soundness become evident. Criteria for assessing soundness provided in the PMP (Rates of return on equity, periodic reports and audits, etc) were not reported on. Data reported in the PMP on number of people ‘employed’ includes beekeepers, and handcrafts makers that have signed up membership to the project supported association. To a large extent these figures do not represent jobs newly created but are more a measure of the attractiveness of the new institutions for doing CBVs ‘collectively’. The only real “new” form of benefit seems to be from the mushroom growing, and perhaps the HuGo groups (who have benefited from micro-credit), although the majority of the latter groups were formed before the project began. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 45 Nkuringo Eco-Lodge. A three-year negotiation process with the communities of Nteko and Rubuguri parishes in Kisoro District has been supported by AWF. Progress so far: – o Discussions with community to support formation of an appropriate community institution. Constitution drafted, registration process supported. o Nkuringo Conservation & Development Foundation (NCDF) registered as a Private Company Limited by Guarantee in April 2004. o Capacity building of the group and participatory selection process to identify areas in which NCDF wanted assistance – Community tourism and an “Ecolodge” identified; o AWF have supported Group habituation – ongoing since 1997. Mock tourism started in April 2004, and “live” gorilla tracking with tourists began in Oct 2004. o Negotiations with UWA to allocate 6 permits to NCDF and an MoU with UWA has been signed. Details of this mechanism are provided in Box 5. o Nkuringo Tourism development plan has been prepared with AWF support. o A consultant was hired to design trails in the park. NCDF contracted through UWA with funds from IGCP/AWF to build trails. o A suitable site has been identified (5.3 acres), purchased, surveyed and demarcated using money saved from trail construction. o AWF facilitated District Land Committee to sit. o Expressions of Interest were invited (Jan ’05) from potential investors (4 responded); o Detailed business plans were then invited from 2 interested private sector partners; o Selection process has just recently (early July ‘05) identified preferred candidate; NCDF are expecting employment, a share of profits, markets for their food produce, opportunities for other activities such as craft making, community tourism and gorilla tracking – perhaps with community guides. The negotiation of a final contract with a private sector partner that incorporates these community aspirations still lies ahead. Clearly this is a very critical and major step to ensure that they get a good deal. Box 5. The NCDF-UWA Gorilla Permit Deal UWA are committed to give the NCDF / Private Sector partnership exclusive rights to sell bed-space in a high quality eco-lodge for 6 Gorilla tracking permits. No other tour operator will have access to these permits. UWA will retain the revenues from the permit sales. The Private sector partner will have exclusive access to the gorilla permits of the Nkuringo group up to 6 months in advance of the tracking date. A grant of up to $250,000 is anticipated from PRIME/West through IGCP/AWF will contribute to the costs of building the lodge, and through a negotiated concession agreement, it is proposed that the Community will become the ultimate owners of the lodge, with a Private Sector partner contracted to manage the facility. The NCDF/ Private Sector Partnership will negotiate a contract that includes a revenue sharing mechanism and other aspects of the package of benefits anticipated by NCDF. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 46 The objective is to avoid the overly competitive and inefficient situation seen at Buhoma, where 4 up￾market hotels and a number of low-end hostels have built 120 bed spaces for only 6 gorilla permits. Next steps include: o Work out the details of the contract between NCDF and the preferred private sector partner for the construction, ownership, management and revenue sharing from the Eco-lodge. o Eco-lodge construction is to be completed within 1 year of signing a contract between NCDF and the private sector partner. Meanwhile the private sector partner will put up a temporary tented camp. While a very interesting process of negotiation has been successfully concluded to date, and AWF support much appreciated by NCDF, the final ‘deal’ is far from clinched – IGCP / AWF will have to work hard to secure the level of benefits anticipated by the community. Exclusive access to 6 gorilla permits is a very enticing carrot for a private sector partner but ultimately this partner will be watching his own bottom line (profitability). NCDF will have to be realistic in their expectations and avoid falling into the trap of over-optimistic community expectations that has ensnared Amajembere Iwachu (see below). Other key benefits of the process have been: o Improved community participation in all conservation and development issues; o Greatly improved relations with UWA, who use NCDF as point of reference for all matters relating to the park. o Reduced occurrence of illegal activities in the Nkuringo sector. o Increased vigilance on illegal activities, and immediate reporting to UWA, including the successful thwarting of an attempted theft of an infant Gorilla. NCDF as an umbrella organisation for the community has helped share ideas and coordinate other development activities, sensitise communities and now routinely handles conflicts relating to the park. Recommendations: R. 66 Deepen Project/Community analysis and understanding of the experiences of other community-private sector ecotourism partnerships. R. 67 Support NCDF to hire competent lawyers to help them draft and negotiate the contract. R. 68 Continue to seek other development partners that can support activities in Nkuringo to avoid over-dependence on AWF/IGCP support. Nkuringo Buffer Zone management A strip of land 12 kilometres long by 350 metres wide (approximately 420 hectares) was bought from local people with a grant through IGCP partnership to provide a buffer between the gorillas and the local community. The rationale was that the Nkuringo Group had been browsing regularly on cropland outside the park on this stretch of land. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 47 Of this, a 200 metre wide strip has been added to the park and will be exclusively UWA property. Natural regeneration is being encouraged and the community, under contract with UWA, are removing exotic species. The remaining 150 metres strip will be jointly owned and managed by UWA and the NCDF. IGCP/AWF have been conducting trials of planting Artemisia as a buffer crop – a medicinal plant in high demand for the production of anti-malarial drugs. There are high expectations within the community that Artemisia will prove to be a high value cash crop. East African Botanicals have recently bought the former pyrethrum processing factory nearby and plan to convert it to extraction of Artemisia, with support from a number of Donors. According to a report by TechnoServe7 (October 2004) suggest that the returns from Artemisia growing can compete favourably with those from such traditional crops as bananas, maize and potatoes in some environments. This is a rather more modest claim than those heard circulating in the communities, and among project staff, which seem to portray Artemisia as a silver bullet or “wonder crop”. Its main advantage over other conventional crops is that it appears less prone to problem animal damage. Since it is still a trial, raising expectations with high estimated revenues is premature, as there are still many unknowns on yields, quality, processing and marketability of the raw leaf. There are also discussions about supporting the establishment of a tea-processing factory to the south of the park, because the existing tea factory on the northern side is very far by road around the eastern end of the park. According to Local Govt, the buffer zone as such is not yet benefiting local communities. A large part of the value of the project as perceived by local communities in Nkuringo has been the funds generated by selling their land, which has helped people start their own projects, such as house building with tin roofs Recommendations on Buffer Zone R. 69 Accelerate process of establishing alternative cash crops (e.g. Tea, Artemisia) that can be grown on the shared area, and keep community expectations of potential benefits realistic. Amajambere Iwachu Community Campground IGCP / AWF initially offered to raise funds to improve the existing campground at the Gateway to Mgahinga National Park and run it as a community based ecotourism venture. This campground had been built over years with assistance from various quarters (including Peace Corps) on a piece of land belonging to 33 individuals who had bought it collectively some time ago and named their joint holding “Amajambere Iwachu”. The campground was of low standard, somewhat run down, and required substantial investment to attract new customers. With the objective of assisting more than a handful of individuals, AWF/IGCP stimulated the establishment of the Mgahinga Community and Development Organisation (MCDO) as a 7 TechnoServe (2004) Production of Artemisia annua in Tanzania and Kenya and extraction of Artemisinin in Tanzania and/or Kenya. Report to USAID AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 48 Company limited by Guarantee, with a membership of about 2,400 individuals from the three parishes neighbouring Mgahinga NP, namely Gisozi, Gitendere and Rukongo parishes. IGCP/AWF then helped MCDO to secure a grant of $50,000 for supporting a community campground initiative of MCDO involving renovation, improved marketing and so on. The UNDP Grant proposal also involved bringing in a private sector partner to manage the campground with the carrot of the community offering the land plus the UNDP Grant to invest jointly in the project so as to secure it’s own “share” of revenues. It was expected to generate USh20million per annum that would be split between the three parishes to support community projects. Expressions of interest from private sector partners were invited, and bids prepared by short-listed candidates. “Red Chilli”, a Kampala based low-budget tourism operation won the bid and prepared a co-management agreement for the development of the campground to sign with MCDO. AWF/IGCP then suggested that “Amajambere Iwachu” donate the land to MCDO as a condition to receiving the grant. Initially this was agreed. At the last minute “Amajambere Iwachu” decided that they instead wanted to be compensated for the land. After some negotiations, a government valuer was brought in and valued it at 30 million Ugandan Shillings which was considered by almost all concerned as a fair price, allowing for the fact that its strategic location increased its value over average agricultural land prices. MCDO raised 2.4 million from membership contributions of USh 1,000 from each of 2,400 members across the three parishes, and AWF/IGCP offered to pay the balance to purchase the land and secure a land title for MCDO. However, “Amajambere Iwachu” demanded USh67 million, and AWF refused, and instead recommended that the UNDP grant be used for other purposes. By this time Red Chilli had already started investing modest sums of its own in the campsite and had committed itself to advertising tours and developing new packages. They found themselves without any agreement with MCDO (as they did not actually own the land), or any grant to co-finance the investment. Some senior elected members of MCDO and indeed UWA Park staff are also members of “Amajambere Iwachu” creating a complex web of interests. To date little of the UNDP grant has been spent – on surveying the plot of land and obtaining a government valuer to calculate a value of the land, and drafting some renovation plans. IGCP/AWF has continued to provide other forms of support to MCDO, such as training in beekeeping and bamboo cultivation. Red Chilli have decided to go ahead and sign an agreement with “Amajambere Iwachu” alone, based on a rent of 3million UgShs per year, and will see how business develops. Meanwhile “Amajambere Iwachu” acknowledge that they do not have the capacity to manage the campground alone and that it will collapse without a private sector partner. There will be fewer beneficiaries to divide more modest profits. A 3million return (the rent paid by Red Chilli) from a 30million estimated value of the property represents a 10% return on capital value, which is probably realistic. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 49 The team concluded that this is a waiting game, and that finally “Amajambere Iwachu” will either accept a sensible offer from MCDO for their land, or go ahead with Red Chill on a much revised business model, or seeking alternative sources of funds. Meanwhile a resolution has to be reached as to how to use the remaining funds from the UNDP Grant. Options suggested by MCDO members include various projects: o Rainwater harvesting and tanks to overcome seasonal water shortages that require people to trek far into the Park to collect water from a Spring-line. o Roads o Beekeeping o Office construction for MCDO o Other developmental projects o On-farm bamboo and tree planting. Recommendations: R. 70 Encourage “Amajambere Iwachu” to go ahead with Red Chilli on a revised business model. If 33 households benefit, this is still a viable CBV that supports local livelihoods, albeit perhaps less deserving of a large external grant from UNDP. However, that should not put them off from trying to raise funds from other sources. R. 71 Assess the potential of using the UNDP Grant to kick-start a business oriented rainwater-harvesting scheme, and/or tree nurseries, managed by MCDO; Both of the above options have the potential to become self-financing, and have a clear conservation element – in reducing threats to the National Parks (see Table 1 - key threats). MCDO could be contracted (on a ‘profit-making business’ principle) to build storage tanks from locally made bricks for individuals (who will have to pay for them) and who can then charge others in the community from water that they collect in their tanks. This could be linked into encouraging micro-finance institutions to offer their services to such projects. Recommendations relating to Beekeeping, bamboo and tree planting options are made under specific sections relating to these CBVs. Buhoma Community Rest Camp The Buhoma Community Rest Camp Development Association (BCRCDA) has benefited from long-standing financial and technical support from a range of different conservation donors over the years, which helped establish it. In this phase, IGCP/AWF supported them to prepare a 5-year Business Development plan, rather than funding any more infrastructure or other direct costs. The plan proposed an investment of an additional $150,000 to upgrade it from “budget” low-cost bandas to mid-range accommodation, which has for long been under￾catered in Buhoma. Architectural plans were also prepared with project support. The plan recommended that they should register as a private company (up until now they have been an NGO), link to donor agencies, and/or find a private sector partner to put in this AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 50 money. Some members were taken on a study tour to Kenya to see how similar community / private partnerships had worked in the tourism business. However, the Buhoma Community seem to have decided they would prefer to operate alone. Having approached one or two Donors, they have retreated - they say because there are too many strings attached (e.g. having to provide 25% co-financing, and reformatting proposals). They have not yet started to reinvest their own funds significantly, even though they are generating quite a healthy profit (20% over operating costs) and could well afford to plough it back into the upgrading of the existing bandas one by one. They could equally afford to take a loan from a bank, upgrade more facilities in one go, and pay back over time. However the strong impression of the Evaluation team was that they are hoping that the donors will once again come and “give” them money for future developments without having to make any matching commitments. Another concern is that one of the formerly “high-end” lodges has been bought out and the new owners have wisely decided to drop prices to mid-range, moving it away from competition from the two high end lodges, and thus now representing real competition for the Rest Camp. A minor issue raised was that the Community would like to have a proper Leasehold document from the Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST) which own the land on which it is sited. Recommendations R. 72 Facilitate the issuing of a leasehold title by MUST to Buhoma Community Rest Camp Development Association. R. 73 Invest more efforts to explain the Private sector / Community partnership concept to the Buhoma Community Association membership. R. 74 Revise format of Rest Camp accounts to show profits before grants are given to community projects and use to leverage bank credits, or donor co-financing. R. 75 Support Association to break down their upgrading plan into simple phases and perhaps make the overall investment plan less ambitious. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 51 Buhoma Town While not specifically an objective under this Grant, there is widespread consensus that Buhoma town is becoming an eyesore – unplanned shacks are springing up left and right to offer the same over-supply of mediocre quality craft merchandise which is inconsistent with the high quality tourism experience UWA are trying to sell in the Park. The contrast with the backdrop of natural forest – which is the ultimate reason why tourists visit Buhoma - is startling (see Figure 5). Figure 5. Buhoma main street – unsightly infrastructure in a high-profile tourism destination. There are a range of options – one of which is to prepare a development plan for the town, including some green landscaping, a well-designed craft market and refreshment hall with small stalls that accommodate a carefully selected range of products, ideally under some form of community ownership and management. Detailed recommendations are provided in the District Tourism Plan (which was not reviewed as part of this evaluation due to lack of time). R. 76 Assess the potential for giving Buhoma main street a much-needed face-lift. Handcraft Development UCOTA has been contracted under the project to provide support to handcraft product development, training and marketing. 12 small groups (including 1 Batwa group who are not traditionally handcraft makers) were grouped into two larger groups and have been trained. More than 200 women are members, while the men mostly make tea baskets or do wood carving. Through training and product design improvements, the quality of products has improved. It is not clear to many observers how well Uganda can compete economically on the international market for craft manufacturing – which is dominated by more industrial style production rather than cottage industry craft production. Mushroom Growing Mushroom growing is a straightforward intervention – women’s groups have been taught how to grow mushrooms indoors, using Millet chaffs as the substrate. Capital investment is minimal, and yields are good; there is adequate demand on local markets, and the economics AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 52 look positive. Women report that they now have mushrooms all year round, whereas they used to have to go to the forest and would only get them seasonally. Groups have some difficulty getting spores to initiate the crop, but once trained, they are quite capable of passing on their skills to other groups. Some women take them to the markets in town. The ability of the local market to absorb more and more mushrooms is not known. Sun drying and storage is an option when surpluses are produced. It is not clear how much impact mushroom growing has on the forest, but one would assume it would be minimal. However it was not explicitly included in the Resource Access agreements between Communities and Park Authorities, so harvesting remains technically illegal and could have been a source of conflict, if not threat to the forest. Beekeeping Beekeeping and honey harvesting are old traditions of the region. Honey harvesting from the wild uses smoke (and therefore fire) and was often the cause of accidental fires in the forest. Most of the honey produced was poorly processed, tainted with smoke and used for the local brewing industry. The project has encouraged the formation of Bwindi Beekeeping Development Association (BBDA), which registered in January 2004, and is now promoting both modern beekeeping, and processing for higher quality markets. It recently helped BBDA set up a honey refinery in March 2005, too late to benefit from the February harvest season, so it remains untested to determine how it will help the BBDA members. The flat rate prices proposed for buying in honey from members may not persuade them to come to the refinery, since the brewers are often ready to pay more, when honey is scarce. It is anticipated that the opportunity to sell in larger quantities to the Refinery will be a valued attraction. IGCP brought in expertise on improving the quality of production and marketing during the evaluation (early August 2005) and discussions with the consultant highlighted the need to get private sector partners to assist with marketing to make the business truly viable. This seems to be on track and it remains to be seen how BBDA evolves. Human Gorilla Conflict Resolution (HuGo) Some gorillas come out of the park to browse on crops in community farmland, especially the unhabituated groups. Historically this has been a major source of conflict between UWA and the community, who saw wild animals as their ‘enemies’. HuGo is an intervention initiated by IGCP/AWF since 1997-8 between the park and local communities in which community members have been trained in gorilla behaviour and how to chase them back into the park – often not an easy task. Community members are not paid in cash, but volunteers are kitted up with gumboots, raincoats etc, and are provided with free “posho and beans” by UWA after engaging in a gorilla chasing exercise. As a result of this intervention, community members now know to report Gorillas moving out of the park to the HuGo group who are empowered to respond immediately without waiting a long time for UWA park staff to arrive. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 53 The assumption has often been made by many conservation organisations that communities have a vested interest in protecting their crops from wild animals and would therefore provide free labour to do so, without expecting any compensation from the Protected Area Authorities (PAAs). However, to a large extent communities instead perceive this “empowerment” as PAAs simply transferring some of the cost of conservation to them (see also Namara and Nsabagasani, 2003). After some years, many HuGo members began complaining that they were not sufficiently rewarded for their efforts on behalf of both conservation and their community. In response, AWF/IGCP has recently begun providing micro-grants exclusively to HuGo members (approx. $230 equivalent each) to invest in micro-enterprises of their choice, typically livestock. Some UWA staffs expressed the need to provide more rewards – and to expand the mandate beyond the responsibility to control gorilla excursions out of the forest to other problem animals such as elephant, buffalo and “vermin”8 . The review team wholeheartedly supports this suggestion and understand that it has already been written into the new funding proposal submitted by AWF/IGCP to USAID (via PRIME/West). NCDF want to address the issue of vermin and problem animals with more permanent solutions. In April 2005 they began trialling Mauritius Thorn (Caesalpinia decapetala) as a vegetative barrier, which once established is impenetrable to all but the largest (elephant) and smallest mammals (e.g. porcupine and other rodents) on a 1.2km stretch of park boundary. It is still early to determine whether it is effective, but according to research done by ITFC it is a manageable solution to vermin and problem animals. The HuGo groups have been one of the most successful and replicable interventions of the Project, with successes going well beyond its mandate. That said, it appears to rely largely on external support (the micro-grants from AWF/IGCP) to sustain community interest and support. Given their conservation impacts, securing sustainable sources of financing for HuGo groups should be a high priority for a more targeted approach to UWA revenue sharing. Vermin guards have been identified from the community – and are pending training. They seem to be a different set of people from the HuGo groups, in different villages, and based on a different institutional set-up. The evaluation team see this to be replication of effort. Recommendations R. 77 Provide more rewards to HuGo Groups that effectively report illegal activities and where indicators from RBM data show reducing levels of threat within the park. R. 79 Conduct more participatory research and development work into finding ways in which the HuGo groups can expand their mandates to include a wider range of conservation interventions (such as reporting illegal activities, and other problem animals such as elephant, buffalo and “vermin”) in return for support to group members to improve local livelihoods. R. 80 Develop mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of finance for the HuGo groups. 8 Vermin are defined by UWA Board as Baboons, Bushpigs and Vervet Monkeys. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 54 Revenue Sharing from Gorilla Permits. IGCP / AWF have successfully lobbied UWA to share part of all Gorilla Permits with local communities - $9 per permit is deducted. UWA is still developing the mechanism for disbursement but initial discussions with UWA indicate that $5 goes to the MBIFCT and the remaining $4 into UWA’s national Revenue Sharing Basket. IGCP are looking for an opportunity to increase the share of Gorilla revenues that goes to local communities. IGCP/AWF recognise that UWA are not in a position to accept a reduction from current revenues from Gorilla Permits, but have set their targets on increasing this share next time that UWA are reviewing their fee rates (see Section 6.5.2 for more recommendations on ‘influencing UWA Decision making processes’). A more comprehensive revenue sharing agreement is being worked out in Nkuringo (see Section 6.6 for more details). Recommendation: R. 81 Summarise the process of achieving the issuance of permits to community groups in a case study / briefing note to disseminate lessons learned to other IGCP partners. R. 82 Lobby UWA to package any future increase in prices of Gorilla tracking permits with an improved revenue sharing arrangement with frontline community institutions such as HuGo groups, which clearly contribute to conservation. Broader Revenue Sharing Policy The UWA Revenue Sharing policy has been identified as a target for lobbying for changes throughout the IGCP lifetime, and indeed by many other old and new projects (CARE – DTC, and now CARE – REPA Projects and the USAID PRIME/West Programme). But progress on achieving meaningful and lasting impacts have been disappointingly slow. The Evaluation report (Feb 1999) of the last phase of USAID grant to IGCP likewise was disappointed with progress on efforts to achieve revenue sharing with frontline communities that both improves their wellbeing and is more clearly supportive of conservation, rather than just “improved attitudes towards conservation”. This evaluation team argue that it is reasonable and necessary to minimise and mitigate the costs of conservation as imposed by “Problem Animals” and “Vermin” on the Frontline Communities. However, while it is written into the Wildlife Statute that 20% of gate fees be shared with local governments, there is no obvious justification why park revenues should automatically be shared with local communities (further back from the frontline) that are not sharing the costs of conservation. The original logic may have been to give the general community a sense of “equity” in the national parks, or as a means to entice communities to reduce their threats to the Parks. Whatever the reasons, the ongoing review of the wildlife policy and legal framework provides an opportunity to revisit the rationale for the Revenue Sharing Policy and to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 55 Using conservation-generated funds for more general development objectives may simply be digging a hole in UWA revenues that must still be filled by donor funds, or repayment of development loans (such as PAMSU) by the people of Uganda. The illogical nature of the current Revenue Sharing Policy is illustrated as follows: o Funds from UWA Revenue Sharing Scheme support a secondary school at a sub-county headquarters to which few frontline community members send their children; o The IGCP/AWF project provides small grants to the HuGo groups that are clearly addressing a key conservation issue; N.B. UWA do also provide some support but insufficient to make the groups sustainable. Sustainability of the HuGo groups would most logically lie in obtaining full support from UWA’s Revenue Sharing mechanism, rather than from external, temporal and therefore non￾guaranteed partner funding. The Mgahinga Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust (MBIFCT) is the existing long￾term institution that is mandated to fund conservation initiatives in frontline communities around Bwindi & Mgahinga NPs. It is currently using funds from its own endowment but it could equally act as a channel for managing and distributing UWA Revenue Sharing funds and/or more Donor funds. MBIFCT expressed a desire to see more clarity and specialisation in the roles of different conservation agencies on the ground. They would like donor-funded projects to further strengthen the role of MBIFCT as ‘the’ community grant management mechanism in the region, while focussing their own project activities at areas where they have special competence such as IGCP managing human-wildlife relationships. However, MBIFCT also needs to find better ways of targeting grants to real cost-bearers (and threateners). A recent review10 of the MBIFCT grant making priorities reached the conclusion that it should stop funding infrastructural developments that should be the responsibility of other government agencies (such as roads and schools). It is timely for all project partners to work closely with UWA to review thoroughly the premise for, and impacts of the revenue sharing policy both on UWA and on the local communities, and to help UWA design and implement more efficient mechanisms for achieving both the PR and the community conservation objectives. Recommendation R. 84 Support/contribute to a review of the UWA Revenue-Sharing policy that shifts funding priorities towards those that have a direct and positive conservation linkage (such as supporting HuGo / Problem Animal Control initiatives). R. 85 Make more use of existing grant-making mechanisms such as MBIFCT to channel support to initiatives in local communities. 10 Kamugisha and Kazoora, 2003. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 56 ICD Review A key undertaking under this Project phase was the review of the Integrated Conservation and Development programming. It aimed to answer the question “has 15 years of ICD programming succeeded in increasing support for conservation among local communities”. It was jointly financed and implemented by a range of donors and projects including IGCP. It provides a valuable insight into how to target support in the future to maximise conservation impact with limited funds. Findings from a comprehensive research programme are summarised in the box below and since they are key to other recommendations made in this report, are quoted verbatim in Box 6. General Recommendations relating to CBVs R. 86 Strengthen efforts to identify CBVs that have clear impacts on reducing key threats, and are directly accessible to the key threateners. This will not be easy but is critical if the poorest are not going to become marginalised by conservation efforts. R. 88 Focus NGO efforts more on group formation, skills training, linking CBVs to Private Sector Partners, capacity building in governance, managerial, accountability and negotiation skills … so that they are more capable of running their organisation and their CBV equitably and sustainably (i.e. profitably!). NGOs have proven to be unable to make much impact on market share for products such as honey, crafts, and novel crops. Private sector have more vested interest to make CBVs work. R. 89 Strengthen sustainable business partnerships between CBV Associations (e.g. NCDF, Bwindi Beekeeping Development Association, Craft Groups, etc) and Private Sector to focus on product development, advertising, increasing access to markets, and boosting sales. R. 92 Identify and promote opportunities to transfer CBV Technology Packages such as bamboo planting and mushroom growing to other programs (e.g. Africa2000Net, NAADs, Africare etc) and local extension services. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 57 Box 6. Extract from ICD Review o Community attitudes to the parks have improved greatly since gazettement ten years ago, and ICD strategies have played an important role in this. o The poorest people generally have less positive attitudes, but when they receive park-related benefits, it leads to a higher level of attitude change than for richer people. o Problem animal damage to crops has a negative impact on attitudes, and while this damage seems to affect different wealth categories equally, the negative impact on attitudes of the poor is much greater. o Community cooperation with park authorities has also improved, particularly willingness to assist in fighting fires and to a lesser extent reporting of illegal activities, and ICD strategies have again played an important role in this improvement. o While both community members and park staff state that illegal resource extraction has decreased, there is little evidence to support this from data on illegal activities within the parks in recent years, nor is there evidence that areas which have received particularly intensive investment in ICD (such as multiple use zones) experience lower levels of illegal activities. o Law enforcement is by far the most frequently cited reason as to why illegal activities would be reduced, although ICD strategies are sometimes also cited. It is the poorest people who are thought to be most involved in illegal activities, generally for subsistence purposes. o The exact nature of the impact on attitudes and cooperation with park authorities (in how they reach different wealth categories, the scale and magnitude of the effect, and how they affect different aspects of attitudes and cooperation) depends on the individual strategy. For example multiple use has been particularly effective in increasing cooperation in fire control, while agricultural interventions and conservation trust fund have had most significant impact on attitudes overall. o We conclude that ICD strategies have, through their impact on community support for conservation, reduced some of the threats to biodiversity in Mgahinga and Bwindi, in particular fires and politically driven threats (e.g. degazettement, roads). o There is also evidence that ICD strategies have made the protected area authority’s work easier, through improved community cooperation, and have at least the potential to reduce the cost of law enforcement. PA linked benefits have been particularly important in achieving this. The long-term sustainability of these links is likely to be important in sustaining the positive conservation impact of ICD. o However, ICD strategies do not seem to have had a major impact in reducing illegal forest resource exploitation. This could be due to a number of factors. Firstly, illegal activities are mainly conducted by poorer people, but many of the strategies have not reached the lowest wealth categories very effectively. ICD has not been effective in ensuring explicit links between rights/benefits and responsibilities at community level, particularly with regards to preventing illegal activities. o Crop damage by problem animals remains a serious challenge, with a strong negative impact on attitudes, which may have diluted the potential impact of ICD. o Considerable time and resources have been invested in ICD in SW Uganda, which should have been enough to achieve significant changes in people’s attitudes to the park. However, the type and magnitude of development changes which would significantly reduce local people’s direct need for forest resources might take much longer. o Lastly, effective law enforcement is needed to back up ICD strategies in reducing illegal activities, and despite recent changes in attitudes and practices remains an important part of the ICD equation. Extract from Executive Summary of ICD report (Namara et al, 2005, draft). The findings of the ICD Review point very strongly at the need to develop much more integrated mechanisms for monitoring threats and illegal activities and targeting benefits and development opportunities directly at those who either prove that they are helping to reduce these threats, or at activities that help the threateners to take up other forms of economic activities. This is illustrated in the diagram below. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 58 Figure 6. Illustration of stronger links between development rewards and conservation incentives HuGo, PAC, CPIs, NCDF, MCDO, etc Emerging Frontline Community Conservation Institutions - starting to regulate access and resolve conflicts in return for development rewards Links between Programme activities and overall Conservation Objective is Clear = Greater incentives for Conservation by Frontline Communities Research and Monitoring programmes (inc. RBM) identify key threats, illegal activities and monitor their spatial and temporal distribution. Results are published in media and format that communities can access and understand Socio-economic research and good participatory processes analyse key sources (threateners) and underlying causes of threat. Solutions identified with key threateners Revenue Sharing, CBVs, and other mechanisms that aim to provide benefits to the community are targeted in priority at addressing the threateners and underlying causes of threat and reducing the costs of conservation to frontline communities, e.g through HuGo, PAC, Buffalo Walls, etc Reward mechanisms directly benefit those individuals (or preferably organised community groups) that report illegal activities and have track record of low rates of illegal activity recorded in their area. Level of benefits are linked directly to published results from M&R i.e. “performance based” rewards Measuring Conservation Performance: Research & Monitoring Programmes The Rewards: Conservation Based Venture & Revenue Sharing Programmes AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 59 6.6.2 GVL products and services effectively linked to regional and international markets Indicators for this IR were: o Volume of sales of GVL products and services; o Value of strategic agreements; o Value of resources raised; Volume of sales of GVL products and services Main source of revenue increase reported against indicators is from Buhoma Community Rest Camp, due to an increase in Charges that were prompted by IGCP/AWF recommendations in the business plan, and from the nature walk, that was also supported through the Project. Very limited evidence of project yet enhancing linkages of tourism products to international markets. Most obviously this would be through promotion of non-gorilla tourism opportunities in Bwindi and Mgahinga given the existing saturation and over-dependence on gorilla-based tourism. Examples highlighted during the evaluation were the cultural walks, bird watching, hiking in Mgahinga and Golden Monkey viewing. Marketing of craft materials overseas by UCOTA has resulted in some increase in sales, on an ad-hoc basis, but from a very small baseline. To break into any meaningful market, a much larger volume of standardised products would probably be required to satisfy regular orders. Again, linkages with private sector craft traders may be the most effective means of achieving any substantial increase in volume of sales. Value of Resources Raised Funds have been raised from 3rd party sources to support new CBVs: • $50,000 - UNDP-GEF Small Grants for Amajembere Community Campground. • $150,000 - WB under Development Marketplace for enterprise development in Nkuringo on the Southern Side of BINP. Value of Strategic Arrangements The strategic agreements signed include: UWA-NCDF agreement on gorilla permits where NCDF will generate an estimated $50,000 per year as income and the second one is Red Chillies Hideaway Ltd -MCDO where MCDO will initially receive about $3,000 per year. Discussions are underway between NCDF and a private sector operator regarding Nkuringo Ecolodge. If negotiations are successful, the private will invest about S300,000 in the lodge. Recommendations R. 93 Invest more efforts in identifying and promoting a more diverse range of tourism products. R. 94 Make linkages with Private Sector to assess and test the potential for boosting sales of craft materials, within the region or internationally. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 60 7 Impact – Purpose and Goal Level Intermediate results have been implemented and most indicators are positive – at or above target levels. Details of the effectiveness of specific intermediate results (IRs) are given in the main text of Section 6. This section now looks at the measurable achievements of goal and purpose level objectives against the indicators. 7.1 Review of Purpose level indicators. Indicators at purpose level were as follows: a. Reduction on key threats; b. Reduction in illegal activities; c. Positive threats reduction analysis. N.B. There is considerable overlap between these indicators – for example illegal activities such as “hunting/poaching” and “timber harvesting” are identified as some of the key threats. The effectiveness of achieving these targets is assessed below. 7.1.1 Reduction on key threats - Indicator (a) The proposed method for evaluation was to analyse the threats identified in the HCP at the Review meeting (held on 2nd August 2005 in Kabale, and attended by the Evaluation Team Leader). This is essentially a subjective assessment by project partners. Based on the updated analysis of key threats coming out of the HCP review (August 2005), there is limited success at addressing, or reducing key threats. We have also prepared an analysis based on the Team Leaders review of key threats and the effectiveness at reducing them as observed during the fieldwork. 7.1.2 Reduction in illegal activities - Indicator (b) Illegal activities in each of the National Parks are monitored through the Ranger Based Monitoring system developed over the years by UWA with support from GTZ and in BMCA, IGCP. This system has taken a long while to become effective for the following reasons: o Frequent transfer of staff trained in Ranger Based Monitoring and data entry and analysis o Insufficient staffing of Mgahinga, with Monitoring & Research supervised by M&R Warden from Bwindi. o Problems with the data analysis component of ‘MIST’ (Management Information System) into which RBM data is entered. However, in spite of these difficulties, UWA staff have been collecting and entering data both into MIST and directly into Excel and ArcView GIS to calculate results and visualise. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 61 Under IR5.2, the project has a stated objective to provide support to UWA/ITFC for joint monitoring activities, and IGCP staff have indeed been trying to assist Park Staff analyse and interpret the RBM data. Park Management typically looks at the “snapshot” of results for one time period and has been looking to see where there are hotspots of illegal activities and/or gaps in the ranger patrol coverage in the Park. However it does not seem that the trends in key indicators have been monitored carefully and / or on a regular basis. This may be because time series have only recently become available. A sample prepared by the consultants is provided in Figure 8 on the following pages. For each illegal activity, the target were: o 10% reduction in Yr 1 (2003), } o 20% in Yr2 (2004), } over baseline (2002) figures. o 25% reduction in Yr3 (2005) } From this time series, targets for reductions in illegal activities have not obviously been met. The most alarming data is that relating to encounter rates of snares, which has doubled for Mgahinga, and increased fourfold in Bwindi, over and above the 2002 baseline. Extensive discussions with a range of project partners raised various issues about the RBM data in general and snares in particular, and various suggestions were put forward for the lack of “reduction” particularly in the number of snares: o “Increased effort to patrol areas not previously patrolled in early years (i.e. away from main pathways and into the centre of the park) has inevitably uncovered new signs of illegal activity. This should not be interpreted as an increase in illegal activity, but an increase in patrol effort and success.” o “Double counting might be occurring where two patrol teams do joint patrols and both record data.” o “Rangers may not be consistently noticing signs of illegal activity on the ground, or recording the data. More training and experience is picking up more illegal activity.” o “The occurrence of illegal activities may be highly seasonal and variable depending on other pressures outside the park. It may also not be uniform but concentrated in some areas” For each of the suggestions put forward, there were those who argued both for, and against their credibility. Those actually responsible for Ranger-based monitoring seemed to accept that the number of snares has indeed increased, based on visual observation, particularly in those areas that are not frequented by tourists or in the multiple resource use zones. Rather than taking these observations purely as criticism, it should be noted that the RBM and other monitoring and research activities in Bwindi and Mgahinga are far more advanced than for a great many other protected areas, but the system is still in a phase of refinement. The Evaluation Team’s main purpose of raising the following issues should therefore be seen more as an opportunity to learn from experiences and improve adaptive management systems: AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 62 o Management had in some cases not previously noticed the trends (though BINP Senior staff say they have noticed them and have been debating the possible causes). o Charts such as those shown in Figure 8 are not apparently available to Park Management, even though they are quick and easy to prepare. o If not accurately reflecting actual threats and/or illegal activities, then these indicators are a dangerous barometer of project success, creating a rod for UWA’s own back. o The reasons why these indicators are increasing needs to be researched urgently, to determine whether it is a result of poor RBM method, or actually reflecting real trends. Recommendations: R. 95 ITFC/IGCP Monitoring Officer should work closely with UWA to assess the consistency of RBM data collection methods and the accuracy of the results obtained. Data should be disaggregated to reflect trends in different sectors of the forest (n.b. this has already been discussed with ITFC and UWA Park management, and agreed in principle); It is likely that poachers are some of the poorest and most marginalised members of the community and require specific approaches to divert their attentions to new CBVs. R. 96 Project interventions should make all efforts to identify the actual “threateners”, and not just the generic “threats”, and develop strategies for addressing this particular socio-economic group. 7.1.3 Positive threats reduction analysis - Indicator (c) The method proposed for monitoring this indicator is essentially the same as for Purpose Indicator (a) – therefore refer to section 7.1.1 for discussion. 7.2 Review of Goal level indicators. The rationale for selecting the Goal level indicators, as agreed with USAID at the time, was not to try to look for specific indicators related to project activities, but rather wider indicators of the conservation status of forests in the project area. It was understood that these would be unlikely to change much in three years, and that if they showed no obvious decline that would be good enough for the purposes of monitoring the success of this project. These indicators would represent part of a longer-term process of monitoring. 7.2.1 Natural Forest Cover - Goal Indicator (A) The project made an early decision to focus on in-park forest cover rather than over the whole landscape. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 63 Specific discussions about the method for monitoring forest cover were held with the Desk Officer at the USAID mission at the time, who favoured aerial photography over satellite image analysis. An additional special grant of $50,000 was allocated to AWF to pay for aerial surveys and photo ortho-rectification and interpretation. PhotoMap (Kenya) were selected (by USAID) and given the contract. Implementation of the aerial survey was much delayed for a number of reasons including cloud cover and obtaining the necessary flight permissions. Only in the past few weeks have the final copies of the photographs been received by ITFC, who are not entirely satisfied with the quality of the resulting photography, making the ortho-rectification process slow and difficult. As a result no possibility of a repeat survey using similar methods is possible during this project phase. Signs of woodcutting for poles, timber and firewood are rarely found far into the park. ITFC had initiated a “field assessment of park edge”, running transects into the Park from the external boundary at regular intervals to count trees cut per km of edge, along with collection of data on edge effects. A baseline was set in 2002, using an extensive study funded by WCS, but has not been repeated due to funding cuts early in the programme (see IR5.2 for more details). This survey should be repeated at the earliest opportunity to provide data on trends. Estimated costs are only $5,000. Another source of data to assess Project impact is Satellite Imagery (LandSat 7TM). WCS and the University of Maryland have run a comparative analysis of forest loss over the 15 years up to 2000 using unsupervised classification into simple “forest / non-forest” classes, and could repeat this analysis now for approximately $5,000. This analysis has been budgeted for in the WCS proposal for monitoring the PRIME/West Project area and will pick up changes in forest cover both within and outside the Protected Areas. Ideally the impact of any future project interventions to protect the small patches of remaining natural forest and stimulate more woodlots on private farmland would also be monitored periodically, but given the very small size of most forest remnants, and woodlots, it may be impossible to pick them up with low resolution satellite imagery. Some imagery has been processed by BEGO (Building Environment for Gorillas) – who will continue to partner with IGCP. There may be opportunities to use this data for a further time-series analysis of trends. PRIME/West is also investing in high-resolution imagery (IKONOS) which may become a valuable monitoring tool for micro-level land use changes. Another cheaper option may be comparison of repeated fixed-point digital photography across the valleys at a number of clearly defined permanent sample points and standard methods. Given the extremely steep nature of the terrain, a photograph taken across a valley from the ground may be no less distorted than a satellite image or aerial photograph! Recommendations R. 97 Repeat survey of tree & pole cutting as soon as possible to provide a repeat measurement against which to monitor performance of this project at purpose level, and to serve as baseline for future activities if funded under PRIME/West. R. 99 Request WCS to repeat Satellite image analysis at the earliest opportunity to provide a baseline for PRIME/West and an end-of-project assessment for the USAID funded IGCP/AWF project under review, and link to BEGO/IGCP support. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 64 R. 100 Assess the potential for monitoring remnant natural forest patches and woodlots outside the park using LandSat7 TM, IKONOS or fixed-point photography. 7.2.2 Water Quality - Goal Indicator (B) This indicator has been monitored on a quarterly basis in selected watercourses within the park and shows no significant change over the project period, indicating that there has not been any major change in impacts on the forest. It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of proposed buffer zone management interventions on the surrounding landscape at goal level since water quality measurements are currently not taken outside the park. Extending the water monitoring downstream from the parks, and into the agricultural landscape would help in monitoring impacts of buffer zone management particularly against targets and goals set in the Heartland Conservation Plan, particularly: o Maintenance of “Hydrological Functions – springs and watersheds”. o Reduction of “Nutrient overload (run-off)”. Recommendations R. 101 Extend monitoring of water quality to sample points downstream from the Park perimeter to determine trends in impacts of land use changes outside the park. 7.2.3 Mountain Gorilla populations in Bwindi and the Virungas - Goal Indicator (C) Gorilla Surveys carried out in 1997 and then repeated in 2002 show a growth of 7% over the 5-year period. These surveys also provide a baseline measure of signs of illegal activities. The project have convincingly argued that it is generally not appropriate to resurvey after only 3 years to satisfy monitoring requirements of a short term (3 year) project such as this, but that they may consider re-surveying Bwindi in 2006 for logistical reasons (available resources) and to provide a better baseline for PRIME/West monitoring. This would provide an opportunity to re-measure illegal activities and perhaps large mammal populations more rigorously than is possible by ranger based monitoring. No reported unnatural mortalities of Gorillas have occurred during the period of the project so it is reasonable to project previous trends and assume that the population has continued to grow. The repeat survey will provide evidence of Gorilla population trends. However, it will be difficult to attribute a positive trend to the effectiveness of this project. IGCP/AWF is just one of a wide range of institutions and projects implementing a broad suite of conservation measures. Of course with Mountain Gorillas we cannot afford to have a control group with no conservation interventions against which to compare project impacts. 7.2.4 Abundance of Large Mammals – Goal Indicator (D) This indicator is measured by encounter rates of Mammals during Ranger Based Monitoring, and as recorded along the Ruhija-Ndego Road. Bulldozing and grading of this road during the project interrupted monitoring along it. Data is only available from the RBM and trends over the project period are shown in Figure 7. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 65 Targets were set at maintaining a stable population. Generally RBM appears to indicate increasing populations, and therefore beyond targets, with a few exceptions: o Buffalo and Elephant numbers have reduced in Mgahinga. This may be explained in part by their mobility back and forth to Rwanda, but it should also be noted that there are reports of buffalo being killed when they venture outside the park. The buffalo wall is known to be inadequate (broken and/or not high enough) in some places. o Bushpig populations in Bwindi have fallen slightly, though the change may not be significant. Bushpigs are gazetted as vermin, and may be killed in fields outside PAs. o Golden monkey population trends are erratic, and have been explained to be the result of a new research initiative: rangers accompanied the researchers on a regular basis during 2003, and then a recent attempt to habituate one group in 2005. Overall, the trends are erratic and various critics (including the evaluation team) doubt the statistical accuracy of RBM results. Taken at face-value the positive increase in encounters of large mammal populations suggests that the apparent increase in snare encounter rates identified at the Purpose level indicators, either does not reflect an actual increase in snares (as argued by some UWA staff), or that they have not yet had a noticeable impact on the Goal level indicators (wildlife populations). More research to understand the spatial distribution of large mammals and snares, and the underlying objectives of poachers needs to be conducted as a matter of priority. Bushpig, Baboons and Vervet Monkeys have been classified as “vermin” by UWA Board, which in theory means that farmers are entitled to kill them outside the National Park. However discussions with HuGo Groups and UWA management clearly indicate that snares even on farm are not tolerated, and are considered illegal. This has been a source of controversy between communities and the Park Authorities and needs clarification. Generally the issue of “vermin” and the conflicts that crop-raiding causes between PAAs and local communities has not been clearly addressed by the Project, or the monitoring system. Recommendations: R. 102 Verify the accuracy of RBM estimates of large mammal populations and either work to improve methods to increase statistical validity or explore more objective monitoring methods. R. 103 Monitor populations and spatial distribution of “vermin” species – bushpig and baboon; R. 104 Develop appropriate mechanisms to regulate their populations on the forest edge to manageable levels for local farmers. R. 105 Develop new strategies that address the complex of poaching and “vermin control” and identify longer-term solutions to crop-raiding such as Mauritius thorn hedges, or other suitable barriers. 7.2.5 Populations of Grauer’s Rush Warbler – Goal Indicator (E) This indicator is measured by annual counts in December of each year. The target set was to maintain or increase populations. Three counts have been completed during the project AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 66 lifespan (Dec ’02, Dec ’03 and Dec ’04) and the populations have increased in both Bwindi, and Echuya over this period. There is some speculation that this may reflect their movement between swamps and that the increase may instead reflect the degradation of swamps outside the Protected Areas that is pushing the Warbler populations to shift to PAs. The next counts in Bwindi / Echuya are scheduled for December ’05 and will not be completed before the end of this phase of the project. For reasons of avoiding seasonal effects, it is not appropriate to do the survey earlier just to meet end-of-project monitoring needs. Recommendation: R. 106 Monitoring of Grauer’s Rush Warbler should be extended to some swamps outside the PAs (such as Nyamuriro Swamp on the edge of Bwindi) to determine whether there are indeed corresponding drops in warbler populations there. 7.2.6 Contribution to USAID Strategic Objective 7 The overall USAID SO7 objective of “expanded sustainable opportunities for rural sector Growth” towards which this project contributes is not obvious in the Goal and Purpose level indicators – this is largely due to the fact that the project was designed to contribute to SO2 – an environmental objective which was later scrapped by USAID (see Section 5.1 on Project Design for detailed explanation). However, it was still implicit in the project design that it intends to achieve the higher USAID S07 objective, largely through improving ecotourism and spin-off industries (crafts etc.) via a range of activities to better manage the park and its sustainable tourism potential. There are no Purpose or Goal level indicators for this objective – instead expansion of economic opportunities is envisaged in IR6 and to some extent IR5. The indicators of contribution to SO7 are therefore best read from the Indicators of IR6 success. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 67 Figure 7. Trends in abundance of large mammals (2002-2005) Mgahinga Gorilla NP 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 Black-fronted Duiker 0.0309 0.0225 0.0229 0.0294 Buffalo 0.2263 0.1179 0.1157 0.0771 Golden Monkey 0.3611 0.5085 0.1491 0.3538 Elephant Signs 0.0093 0.0159 0.0173 0.0035 2002 2003 2004 2005 Bwindi Impenetrable NP 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 Black-fronted & Yellow￾backed Duiker 0.0304 0.0334 0.0468 0.0474 Bushpig 0.012 0.0128 0.011 0.0091 Black & White Colobus 0.1453 0.1301 0.2798 0.3012 L'hoesti Monkey 0.1202 0.109 0.19 0.125 Blue Monkey 0.0852 0.1466 0.2941 0.2032 Red-tailed Monkey 0.1818 0.1417 0.2692 0.2997 Elephant signs 0.0139 0.0115 0.0135 0.028 2002 2003 2004 2005 Figure 8. Trends in Ranger Based Monitoring Results 2002-2005 Mgahinga Gorilla NP 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 Snares Beehives Plant Harvesting Grazing Fire Water collection Snares 0.0135 0.0279 0.0033 0.0287 Beehives 0.0006 0.0025 0.0024 0.0004 Plant Harvesting 0.0015 0.0222 0.0212 0.0014 Grazing 0 0.0077 0.0083 0.0485 Fire 0 0.0011 0.0006 0.0004 Water collection 0 0.0027 0.0029 0 2002 2003 2004 2005 Bwindi Impenetrable NP 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 Snares Beehives Plant Harvesting Grazing Fire Water collection Snares 0.0246 0.0312 0.1684 0.0875 Beehives 0 0 0.0004 0 Plant Harvesting 0.0078 0.0091 0.0248 0.016 Grazing 0.0032 0.0037 0.008 0.0029 Fire 0.0019 0.0022 0 0.0047 Water collection 0.0042 0 0 0 2002 2003 2004 2005 N.B. for each illegal activity, the target was a 10% reduction in Yr 1, 20% in Yr2, and 25% reduction in Yr3 over baseline (2002) figures. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 69 8 Sustainability of Project Activities & Results This section summarises the key issues that we deemed important to sustain the successes of the programme over time. The issues are restricted to one per Intermediate Result. The HCP process requires additional commitment of stakeholders and funding of a full time coordinator, which should be budgeted for. Leadership of the process needs to be clarified. Threats reduction – beyond the need to sustain law enforcement, community based threat reduction initiatives must be linked to CBVs or other sources of incentive if threat reduction is to be sustained. Effecting decisions made at regional framework meetings is not straightforward. High-level buy-in is needed to turn good will into concrete action. The political complexity of the Virunga region makes the virtuous efforts to coordinate difficult to achieve in practise. Support to policy review processes will no doubt continue without project support. Coordinated and targeted efforts by the plethora of conservation organisations working in the region would result in more impact in terms of influence on policy formulation. Sustainability of PA protection and management efforts relies on continued external support – an argument supported by the Economic Study. Efforts to make national scale conservation self-financing could be counter-productive, as it would most likely result in increased number of gorilla permits. Diversification of the tourism attractions within all PAs is thus critical. ITFC have been working on proposals to secure longer-term financing to sustain their conservation research and monitoring efforts through establishment of a foundation. Associated feasibility studies and institutional reforms were supported under IR5.2. The real economic viability of most of the new CBVs initiated under this grant project is doubtful without subsidy and external technical support for the next few years. Older established CBVs such as the Buhoma Community Rest Camp are ready to stand on their own two feet. Stronger partnerships between community enterprises and private sector is critical for development of quality products and durable markets, rather than relying on NGOs that are often somewhat naive about markets and are themselves dependent on external support. Long term funding of community-based institutions (such as HuGo) relies in large part on linking them into the UWA Revenue Sharing or MBIFCT mechanisms. Both UWA and MBIFCT would gain credit for expanding their support to this model, which appears to have more tangible local impact on conservation than the Community Protected Area Institutions (CPIs). A sustained expansion of the tourism-based business in the Virunga Landscape requires new investment to diversify away from gorilla-based tourism to broaden its range of products and services, supported by regional and international marketing it as a “package” of tourism opportunities in the Virungas and not just a single-stop destination in a national tour. During the next phase of funding by IGCP, there should be a conscious effort made to design and implement a gradual exit strategy whereby more and more of the programme’s activities are transferred to mandated national and local institutions such as UWA, MBIFCT, Local Government, government programmes such as NAADS, local NGOs and the private sector. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 70 9 Key issues. The following is a summary of the key issues emerging from the review – in a nutshell. Recommendations should guide future project planning, review and monitoring. Landscape planning: ¾ While the HCP approach may finally prove itself a useful tool for strategic planning and partnership building, but at present the HCP plan risks becoming over-complex and the process burdensome. ¾ The HCP process should be used to “think landscape, but act local”, i.e. to tailor and coordinate simple strategies to achieve priority objectives within context of the bigger picture and a wide range of intervening partners. ¾ Landscape planning needs strong coordination (as do regional frameworks), which will not happen without investment in a full time coordinator and agreed process. Threat Reduction: ¾ In future project activity planning and implementation, IGCP and its conservation partners need to deepen their analysis of threateners (who, why?), and strategies to address root causes (e.g. poverty) as well as simply tackling symptoms (e.g. poaching); ¾ IGCP and partners should fully recognise and enhance the potential for frontline community institutions to simultaneously reduce community wildlife conflicts and illegal activities as well as becoming conduits for targeted development support to park adjacent communities; ¾ Developing clear linkages in peoples’ minds that conservation funds are accessible only to those who can demonstrate that they are contributing positively to conservation will make increasingly scarce conservation funds go much further. Regional Frameworks: ¾ IGCP should continue to support cross-border processes, but with more investment in coordination mechanisms, and integration of proposals into national frameworks; Policy influence: ¾ Efforts to review and influence policy have been superficial to date. IGCP needs to deepen its analysis of impact of policy/law on key issues such as problem animal management, vermin control, gorilla-based tourism, and revenue sharing and pilot more novel approaches to each of them to guide future policy development. ¾ IGCP and partners should focus future advocacy work on the ongoing UWA-led review of Wildlife policy frameworks. They also need to professionalize their lobbying skills. Strengthening PA management: ¾ Continued support to UWA should focus on improving adaptive management skills, where managers are more aware of conservation performance indicators and given greater freedom to test, and learn from new approaches to working (particularly with communities) and in diversifying business models for tourism away from Mountain Gorillas; AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 71 Expanding Economic Opportunities: ¾ Generally the objective of increasing the benefits derived from conservation and Protected Areas is consistent with national development policies, and any success in reducing rural poverty will help to increase the relevance and marketability of ‘conservation initiatives’ to the general public and national decision makers. ¾ In future the Programme is encouraged to tighten link between provision of support to CBVs & other conservation-derived benefits targeted at communities with demonstrated improvements in conservation behaviours. ¾ New strategic thinking is needed within UWA about how to sustain its financial viability without continuously increasing the amount of gorilla permits. Gorilla-Based Tourism – a double-edged sword? ¾ There is a real risk that gorilla based tourism that IGCP has invested huge resources over the years to promote actually becomes the key direct threat to Gorillas (through increased risk of disease transmission and impacts on behavioural patterns). Ongoing research and proper enforcement of the “Gorilla Rules” are critical to understanding, monitoring and mitigating these risks. ¾ IGCP should test the assumption that it may be possible to increase revenues while reducing impacts by making gorilla-tracking a much more “exclusive” experience (i.e. not something that the average back-packer can afford) and selling higher-priced permits on the basis that tourists will not be jostling for space in the undergrowth with 7 other people when experiencing a once in a lifetime peep at wild gorillas. ¾ Very preliminary discussions held with fellow IGCP team members raised the idea of independent monitoring of Gorilla tourism – by staff trained to simultaneously provide better information to tourists of the issues relating to gorilla conservation, to research impacts of tourism, and to monitor the consistent enforcement of the “Gorilla Rules11” especially now that groups of up to 8 tourists will be visiting together. ¾ Overly concentrated tourism developments without careful planning and monitoring also risk becoming a double-edged sword for rural development. While tourism clearly brings economic benefits it also brings social problems (such as prostitution linked largely to the influx of tourism-industry workers and security personnel to tourism hubs, dependence of the Batwa on “performances” for tourists, and poorly planned and aesthetically disappointing urban developments (such as the eyesores in Buhoma main street). ¾ The regional tourism development plan has addressed some of these issues but IGCP should invest resources into its implementation, particularly in Nkuringo, which could serve as an alternative model for tourism initiatives. 11 The Gorilla Rules were developed with support from IGCP and are one of the key mitigating measures to reduce risk of disease transmission and disturbance. They are reportedly not consistently enforced - tourists are getting closer, and staying longer than the defined time limits with Gorilla groups. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 72 10 Conclusions. We summarise below our findings against the 4 key questions (as paraphrased by the team) outlined in the Scope of Work for the evaluation (see Annex 1 for details). 1. Did the project succeed? Indicators of Gorilla populations and most of the other environmental targets within the Parks are all positive, but recovery of wildlife populations and changing conservation behaviours are both slow processes. Monitoring over the longer term should be sustained to determine how “real” are the positive but often small changes picked up in the Performance Monitoring Plan in terms of longer term trends. The project has piloted some very cost-effective solutions to in-park conservation both through increasing UWA capacity and partnership building with communities. Particular mention is due for the HuGo groups which appear highly efficient at mitigating some of the human-wildlife conflicts, both in terms of reducing crop losses to raiding wildlife and reducing threats of illegal activities in Protected Areas. Environmental conditions in the wider landscape outside the park are not being monitored sufficiently to draw any conclusions about project impacts, and nor were the activities implemented under this grant likely to have any significant influence on them, other than the Nkuringo buffer zone. To most observers, the quality of the environment outside the PAs is still deteriorating – with increasing losses of soil fertility and clearance of the very few remaining parts of natural vegetation on the steepest of slopes. Gorilla-based tourism revenues are increasing rapidly, due to a number of factors, a good number of which can be attributed to this and previous grants to IGCP/AWF. As highlighted in the Economic Valuation report commissioned by this project, it is not so clear how equitably the benefits of the Protected Areas and tourism are distributed between local, national and international stakeholders. The impact of the project at increasing the incomes of rural communities is less evident, and again is not sufficiently monitored to draw any firm conclusions. Successes achieved in establishing new Conservation-Based Businesses have mostly been modest and relatively isolated in geographical scope (mushroom growing, bamboo planting, craft-making and honey production). The most promising new developments, such as the Nkuringo Ecolodge and associated developments are still in the design and negotiation phase, and buffer crops such as Artemisia are still trials in the early phase. 2. Were partners effectively involved? There has been strong and effective IGCP liaison with some project partners (esp. UWA) and IGCP are now broadening this conservation alliance to Local Govt, Civil Society Organisations (NGOs and private sector). They are encouraged to hand over more and more of the responsibilities for implementation of project initiatives to the appropriate local, national and regional partners. The HCP process was seen as the key mechanism for achieving stakeholder buy-in. It has not achieved this objective adequately and a full time coordinator is required to ensure better liaison and coordination between the many agencies involved in conservation. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 73 3. Will it last? This question is addressed in detail in Section 8. In summary UWA at a national scale remain dependent on external financial support to sustain activities. The Economic Evaluation makes a strong argument for continued, or even increased global funding for conservation of the Bwindi and Mgahinga NPs (in grant form rather than as a loan) to pay an equitable share of the costs of conservation, whose benefits are largely enjoyed internationally. Within it’s own generated revenues, UWA is overly dependent on Gorilla based tourism and while this will probably always remain the mainstay of it’s enterprises, it will only achieve sustainable increases in revenue through diversifying its products. Reduction of threats to the Gorillas and their Afro-Montane Forest habitat still rely largely on heavy investment in patrolling by UWA. More cost effective solutions probably can be found through enhancing the mandates of community based institutions and providing very clear the incentives for better conservation behaviour, through performance based rewards. This approach has widespread application across Uganda and could result in significant cost savings for UWA by targeting patrol efforts where effective community institutions are reporting problems. New CBVs are promising, but need sustained support to bear fruits for at least another 2-3 years before they become self-sustaining. The Nkuringo model stands out as the most innovative and ambitious CBV, but for these very reasons needs a lot more nurturing if it is to be a success. The project has made substantial progress in achieving improved attitudes within UWA and private sector towards working with community institutions. These attitude changes must be sustained through adequate support in the next few years to ensure that this approach becomes a model for Uganda! If it fails, there are many sceptics out there who would make it difficult to attempt such novel approaches to conservation and tourism again. 4. Any lessons for the future? Many valuable lessons have been learned from this evaluation, as illustrated by the long list of recommendations made throughout the text and compiled again in Section 2. The ICD Report (ITFC et al, 2005) provides much more detail than this evaluation. These will not be summarised again here. Instead, UWA & IGCP partners are encouraged to read the relevant sections of these reports before preparing new grant proposals and take on board the experiences of the past 3 years of this project and the lessons learned from this evaluation. In particular PRIME/West (the major USAID funded project in SW Uganda), which is likely to fund another phase of IGCP/AWF activities in the region, should internalise these recommendations and ensure that new activities by IGCP, other grantees, and indeed their own implementation team are informed by the long history of ICD interventions in the region. The single key lesson to take home is for conservation organisations to try to understand the real underlying causes of threat to the overall landscape, and carefully tailor any incentives to communities so that they encourage better conservation behaviour. Monitoring should be geographically accurate enough to identify which communities are supporting conservation so that benefits offered are clearly linked to demonstrated improvements in performance. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 74 Annex 1. Scope of work for evaluation Final evaluation of the USAID funded’ Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project Background The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) was awarded an Associate Award on April 24th 2002 in order to implement the USAID-funded project “Conservation of Afro-Montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context”. The international community recognizes the Afro￾montane forests of southwest Uganda and neighbouring countries as some of the most ecologically rich habitat on the planet. In addition to serving as home to the critically endangered mountain gorilla, these forests harbour many other important species and provide crucial environmental services to surrounding human communities. The program activities were designed to place the conservation of mountain gorillas and their Afro-montane habitat in a broader “landscape context”. This landscape context includes looking at the relevant parks in Uganda; the threats to these parks that originate in the surrounding areas of human settlement; the social and economic requirements of the interface between the parks and surrounding communities; and the international, trans￾frontier nature of the resource. The goal of the ‘Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project was therefore developed to be ‘Greater Virunga Landscape better conserved’ with the project purpose articulated as ‘Virunga Landscape in Uganda better managed’. As a result of a planning meeting at the onset of the project, the following intermediate results were developed to meet this purpose: o Landscape planning and monitoring approach applied to GVL o Key strategies for threat abatement implemented o Regional Frameworks strengthened o National and regional policy improved o Protected areas serving as ecological and economic core areas in the landscape o Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in the GVL In implementing the project, AWF works primarily through the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) and other collaborating institutions, notably the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) and the Uganda Community Tourism Association (UCOTA). The project was initially for three years and slotted for completion on April 25th 2005. The African Wildlife Foundation requested a no-cost extension for an additional three months and the project completion date is now July 25th 2005. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 75 Objective of the evaluation The broad objective of the final evaluation is to assess the performance of the USAID￾funded ’Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project during the entire activity period; April 2002 – July 2005. The specific objectives of the evaluation are:- o To provide project management and partners with an assessment of the project’s activities and their effectiveness in achieving the stated life of project targets and results. o To review extent to which stakeholders and collaborating partners were involved in the design and implementation of the project. o To examine the sustainability of the activities and their results as stated in the Annual Work plans and progress reports. o To distil lessons learned that may be used to guide the development of any further proposals focused on the conservation of the mountain gorillas and afro-montane forests in a landscape context. Existing Performance Information Sources The list below summarizes existing information sources relevant to this study: • Project proposal/Document • Annual work plans • Activity Performance Monitoring Plan • Co-ordination meeting notes • Consultancy reports commissioned by the project o Socio-economic survey o Economic Valuation o Review of Policies and Legislation o Training reports o Habitat restoration report o Gorilla Census report • Contracts for infrastructure • Correspondence between AWF/IGCP, partners, beneficiaries and other parties • Activity Progress Reports Methodology: The evaluation is expected to address the above issues through a mixed methods approach. The evaluation will be initiated with a workshop to clarify SOW issues and to present a detailed evaluation work plan. The evaluation process will include the following steps: 1. Evaluation work plan development workshop During the first three days of the evaluation process the team leader will facilitate a workshop of partners, beneficiaries and other interested parties to present a detailed evaluation work plan. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 76 2. Participatory process The evaluation team will carry out interviews, group discussions, site visits and mini￾workshops with all partners, beneficiaries and interested parties as the major component of the evaluation process. 3. Stakeholder workshop The team leader will present the evaluation findings to the project partners i.e. USAID, AWF/IGCP, UWA, UCOTA and ITFC. Input from workshop participants will be integrated into the final report and will thus form the basis of any follow on projects developed to support the conservation of the mountain gorillas and afro￾montane forests. Deliverables The consultant shall produce a discussion draft report (no more than 5 pages of text in the body of the report, plus an Executive Summary and annexes) for presentation at the stakeholder workshop in addition to a detailed evaluation draft report that responds to the SOW, documents findings and suggests recommendations based on the empirical findings. An analysis of the lessons learnt from the perspective of the various partners, beneficiaries and interested parties will be a central component of the final report. A suggested format for the final report is provided as Attachment A. The consultant shall submit to USAID/Uganda one hard copy and one electronic copy (in Microsoft Word 97 or higher, Times New Roman 12 point font) of the final report within one week after the presentation workshop. Team Composition and Participation The evaluation team will comprise of an external consultant, AWF staff member who has been technically involved throughout the activity’s life, and one representative from the collaborating institutions. It is anticipated that the external consultant who is to provide key input into the study should have the following skills: • Monitoring and Evaluation experience with donor funded Projects and NGOs. • Technical competence in the field of natural resources, economic growth, and relevant analytical tools. • Experience with data collection procedures, evaluation designs, report writing and presentation. • Good communication, rapporteur skills, and ability to interact with Ugandans and expatriates. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 77 Schedule and Logistics The team will begin the evaluation on or around July 05, 2005 with a Team Planning Meeting facilitated by the activity at its offices, and will work for a period of 20 days (8 hours a day). The evaluation team will have the flexibility to design the timing of the evaluation activities described in the evaluation scope, provided the report is submitted in time. The Key consultant is to develop and complete the evaluation work plan within the first three days of the evaluation time frame including a schedule for the submission of final report. The technical reviewer will provide additional support in relation to facilitating the final workshop and commenting on aspects of the process and logic of the project. Budget in (Person days) for Local Consultant No. Activity Local Consultant Technical Reviewer 1. SOW and document review 2.5 1 2. TPM, Initial Meeting with USAID, Presentation of Evaluation Work plan/ methodology 1 1 3. Relevant work on issues raised in the SOW 5 4. Prepare and present comprehensive evaluation draft report based on empirical findings for oral briefing for USAID and other stakeholders. 6 3 (2 days report input and 1 day presentation meeting) 5. Present finding to USAID 0.5 6. Preparation of final report based on written comments from stakeholders 3 1 Total 18 6 AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 78 Annex 2: Schedule for Review. Field work for Final Evaluation of USAID funded ‘Conservation of Afro-montane forests and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context’ project Date Activity Meetings Responsibility to arrange meetings 26th July (Tuesday) Team travels to Kabale 6-7 PM Meet with Jackson Mutebi – CARE/RPIME, Mr Dutji – MBIFCT (over dinner?) Helga Rainer 27th July (Wednesday) Team travel to Nkuringo (overnight Kisoro) 8-12 AM Visit gorillas 2-4 PM Meeting with NCDF 2-4 PM Meeting with warden Innocent/James 28th July (Thursday) Note: referendum day Team in Kisoro 9-11 AM- Travel to MGNP • Meet with park staff • Visit Amajambere Iwachu • Meet with MCDO • Visit VC MGNP site Innocent/James 29th July (Friday) Team in Kisoro 9-10.00 AM - Meet with district officials (LCV) 10.30 – 3 PM – Organize meeting with representatives from the following projects (mini-workshop): • Beekeeping • Mushroom • Bamboo • Batwa Group • Craft workers, Etc. 3-5 PM – Travel to Ruhija, ITFC 30th July (Saturday) Team with ITFC 9-4 PM Meet with ITFC and visit ITFC programs 4-5 PM – Travel to Buhoma Alastair McNeilage 31st July (Sunday) Team in Buhoma 9-12 AM Meet with park staff 1-3 PM Meet with Buhoma Community Campground 3-6 PM Travel to Kabale Innocent/James 1 st - 5th August (Monday) Team leader in Kabale Attend HCP meeting and draft report 5th August Return Kampala AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 79 Annex 3. Documents Reviewed: Namara, A & Nsabagasani, X (2003). Environmental Governance in Africa. Decentralization & Wildlife Management: Devolving Rights or Shedding Responsibility? Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. World Resources Institute. Namara,A., McNeilage,A., Franks,P., Blomley,T., Infield,M., Malpas,R., Donaldson,A., Olupot,W. (April 2005) Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks in Uganda: has 15 years of ICD programming succeeded in increasing support for conservation among local communities? Bwindi and Mgahinga Integrated Conservation and Development Strategies Assessment Project. DRAFT REPORT. Hatfield, R. (2004). The Economic Value of the Mountain Gorilla Forests: Benefits, Costs and their distribution amongst stakeholders. A paper given to the International School of Tropical Forestry, Yale University Spring 2004 Conference, People in Parks: Beyond the Debate (Achieving Conservation in Human-Inhabited Protected Areas). March 2004. Wabunoha, R. (April, 2004). Review Of Laws And Policies Relating To The Conservation Of Great Apes In Uganda And Regionally. A Consultancy Report For The International Gorilla Conservation Programme. Other Documents: ¾ Project Document (the Project Application for Associate Award); ¾ Annual work plans ¾ Activity Performance Monitoring Plan ¾ Heartland Monitoring Plan (Uganda sector) and Annex (the plan) (2003). ¾ Heartland Conservation Planning & Monitoring Meeting Reports. ¾ Minutes of UWA Donor Coordination meeting (April 2005). ¾ Regional Co-ordination meeting notes*; ¾ Consultancy reports commissioned by the project. ¾ Socio-economic survey ¾ Review of Policies and Legislation ¾ Review of Multiple Resource Use Agreements* ¾ Training reports ¾ Habitat restoration report ¾ Gorilla Census report ¾ Contracts for infrastructure* ¾ Correspondence between AWF/IGCP, partners, beneficiaries and other parties* ¾ Activity Progress Reports (Quarterly Reports) * = Documents not seen either because not considered a priority or due to lack of time. AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 80 Annex 4. Key persons met Date People Met Position / Institution Issues covered Helga Rainer Project Manager. Friday African Wildlife Foundation / IGCP. 14th July Anthony Ratter Consultant-Technical Review Project Design Purpose of Review Methods / Schedule. Eunice Mahoro: Deputy Director, Planning, Monitoring & Research Uganda Wildlife Authority (Formerly in charge of Community Conservation) Monday 18th July John Makumba: Deputy Director, Field Operations. Uganda Wildlife Authority. (formerly Chief Park Warden, Bwindi and Mgahinga NPs). Overall project implementation; focus on activities done in collaboration with UWA Jody Stallings Environment Desk Officer, USAID Overall Project and key issues for evaluation Helen Lubowa: Director, Uganda Community Tourism Association (UCOTA) Handcraft development training and marketing. Tuesday 19th July Steve Willis: Managing Director Red Chilli Hideaway Amajembere Campground project Wednesday 20th July Project Partners EVALUATION KICK-OFF WORKSHOP, ARA Makindye Tuesday 26th July Jim Seyler Chief of Party, DAI, PRIME/West. Key issues for future AWF activities / grant. Sabiti Elija. Manager Refinery, Bwindi Beekeeping Development Association Honey processing and marketing as a CBV. 8 Women members Rubanda Solidarity Development Association Mushroom growing as a CBV Chairman + ~20 women members Nteka Handcrafts Group Craft making as a CBV Wednesday 27th July 6 / 7 members of Executive Committee Nkuringo Conservation & Development Foundation Ecotourism as a CBV. Nkuringo Eco-Lodge. HuGo Programme. Land Purchase by UWA. Thursday, 28th July Ghad Mugiri, Senior Warden Robinah Gangitibi, Warden Tourism Milton Shwekyerera, Head Ranger Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Uganda Wildlife Authority. Park infrastructure, equipment and capacity building component. Charles……. ? (Chairman). Mgahinga Community Development Organisation. Amajambere Iwachu – way forward. Dr. Philemon Mateke Chairman, Kisoro District Local Government Mrs Juliana Munderi Vice Chairperson (also Secretary for Production & Environment) Kisoro DLG. Abdallah Musobya Kiganda Chief Administrative Officer, Kisoro DLG Review of Local Govt involvement in project activities. Friday 29th July 3 members of each of 3 CBV groups. Bwindi Beekeepers Development Association, Bamboo Growers, Mushroom growers Review of impacts of CBV support efforts Saturday 30th July Alastair McNeilage, Director, Dennis Babaasa, water quality monitoring. Robert Bitariho, Ecological Monitoring. Institute for Tropical Forest Conservation, Ruhija, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Review of research and ecological monitoring programme of ITFC and partners AWF Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission - July-August 2005 81 Date People Met Position / Institution Issues covered Sunday 31st July John Bosco Nuwe, Chief Warden, John Emitchell Okot, Warden Tourism, Benon Mugyerua, Ass’t Warden, Community Conservation, Edwin Kagoda: Warden Monitoring & Research Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda Wildlife Authority BINP. Sunday Ndayakunze, Village HuGo Chairman John Bihweire Barnabas Tieto Basril Nkunda Anatoli Batanyenda Buhoma “HuGo” Group Alice Kapere Mrs. Leya Buhoma Bwindi Progressive Women’s Group Elifaz Kabugana Ghad Mugiri Trainee wood-carvers, Batwa Community. Augustin Muhanji Trainer, Woodcarving, Buhoma. Training support given through UCOTA to develop craft-making skills of Batwa. James Tweheyo, Chairman Paul Muhwezi, Manager Buhoma Community Rest Camp Association. Review development of business plan for Camp Ground & other support Monday 1 Mr Geo Dutki MBIFCT st August Jackson Mutebi Community Conservation Officer RPIME/West Formerly with CARE DTC Tuesday 2nd to Thursday 4th August All participants in the HCP planning and monitoring process. Stakeholder Institutions from DRC, Rwanda & Uganda. Review threats and strategies identified in HCP Process. Assess impact of HCP overall. Dr. Phillip Muthuli Senior Scientific Officer, AWF Regional HQ, Nairobi. Discussions on HCP process. AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 82 Annex 5. Logical Framework Project: Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context Duration: 36 months May 2002 – April 2005 (extended to July 2005) Budget Ceiling: US$ 2,049,959 SUMMARY OF OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES OBJECTIVELY VERIFIABLE INDICATORS MEANS OF VERIFICATION IMPORTANT ASSUMPTIONS: EXTERNAL FACTORS Goal Greater Virunga Landscape better conserved . . . that measure achievement of Goal G.a Natural forest cover G.b Water quality G.c MG populations G.d Abundance of large mammals G.e Populations of Grauer’s Rush Warbler a. vegetation maps and satellite photography b. field assessment of park edge in BINP and regeneration of forest gaps c. ITFC Ecological Monitoring Programme d. gorilla censuses e. encounter rates during patrols, and recorded on Ruhija-Ndego road f. bird counts . . . to ensure sustainability of Goal Project Purpose Virunga Landscape in Uganda better managed . . . that measure achievement of Project Purpose P.a Reduction on key threats P.b Reduction in illegal activities P.c Positive threats reduction analysis a. ecological and socio-economic data and monitoring b. ranger-based monitoring programme and MIST c. threat analysis meeting reports . . . to achieve Goal Intermediate Results 1 Landscape planning and monitoring approach applied to GVL MA1.1 Implementation of AWF HCP Activities: 1.1 Threats reduction analysis 1.2 Monitoring for continuous assessment of conservation targets 1.3 Heartland conservation planning (HCP) . . . that measure achievement of Intermediate Results 1.a Heartland Conservation Action Plan 1.b Activities identified in HCP complete 1.c Monitoring of critical conservation targets a. documentation of HCP process: heartland conservation action plan; questionnaires b. project reports c. partner institutions reports . . . to achieve Project Purpose 2 Key strategies for threat abatement implemented MA2.1 Implementation of strategies to address key threats Activities 2.1 Protecting human health 2.2 Improving agricultural practices 2.3 Improving NR management 2.a Number of key strategies implemented • ??? 3 Regional frameworks strengthened MA3.1 Supporting participation of Uganda in regional GVL activities Activities 3.1 Regional meetings 3.2 Regional tourism 3.3 MoUs between PAAs 3.4 Uganda’s participation in regional frameworks 3.a Number and type of frameworks established/strengthened 3.b Number of key actions addressing critical threats a. project reports b. MoUs signed c. PAA reports of joint activities AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 83 SUMMARY OF OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES OBJECTIVELY VERIFIABLE INDICATORS MEANS OF VERIFICATION IMPORTANT ASSUMPTIONS: EXTERNAL FACTORS 4 National and regional policy improved MA4.1 Support to UWA and the national/regional policy context MA4.2 Economic valuation of natural resources and ecological processes in GVL Activities 4.1 Policy review and analysis 4.2 Economic valuation of Virunga/BINP 4.3 Socio-economic survey 4.4 Tourism bill 4.a Policies supportive of conservation (number of policies under development or completed) a. minutes of meetings b. development of policy documents 5 Protected areas serving as ecological and economic core areas of the landscape 5.a Revenue to UWA and community camp-ground • park records • camp-ground records • economic valuations 5.1 Priority actions of BINP and MGNP GMPs implemented MA5.1.1 Development of additional infrastructure in BINP and MGNP MA5.1.2 Support to UWA for specific NRM activities MA5.1.3 Training for BINP and MGNP staff MA5.1.4 Provision of basic field equipment to BINP and MGNP Activities 5.1.1 Signage 5.1.2 Visitor Centre 5.1.3 Field equipment 5.1.4 Fire management 5.1.5 Habitat restoration 5.1.6 Training 5.1.a Number of actions identified in GMP implemented with at least partial support from the project 5.1.b New infrastructure 5.1.c Number of staff training courses successfully implemented 5.1.d Incidence of human/livestock-originated gorilla disease 5.1.e Extent of fire damage a. UWA and project annual workplans and progress reports; b. building plans, specifications; c. training needs assessment / training reports: staff performance reports d. ITFC Ecological Monitoring Programme e. Ranger Based Monitoring / ITFC EMP. 5.2 UWA management decisions strengthened by monitoring and research MA5.2.1 Support to UWA/ITFC for joint research and monitoring activities Activities 5.2.1 Integration of management and research between ITFC and UWA 5.2.2 Research on gorilla conservation and management 5.2.3 Research on effectiveness of ICDPs 5.2.a Number of M&R activities under way or completed 5.2.b Number of UWA management actions based on M&R results • ITFC project reports and annual reports • annual review of research priorities • annual operation plans • workplans • minutes of UWA management meetings • annual review of research priorities 6 Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in GVL 6.a Household income based on household assets 6.b Household income based on cash inflows • baseline reports from IGCP and other organizations – e.g. Africare • interviews • project reports • baseline reports • interviews • project reports AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 84 SUMMARY OF OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES OBJECTIVELY VERIFIABLE INDICATORS MEANS OF VERIFICATION IMPORTANT ASSUMPTIONS: EXTERNAL FACTORS 6.1 Opportunities for CBVs identified and developed MA6.1.1 Commercial opportunities assessed for parks, periphery, and other areas in GVL MA6.1.2 Study tours/capacity building for target community-based enterprises MA6.1.3 Support for structuring CBVs Activities 6.1.1 Eco-tourism lodges 6.1.2 Bee-keeping 6.1.3 Mushrooms 6.1.4 Bamboo 6.1.5 HUGO 6.1.6 Batwa NGO 6.1.7 Revenue sharing 6.1.8 UCOTA (handicrafts development) 6.1.a Number of on-going CBVs operating on sound business principles 6.1.b Number of new enterprises established 6.1.c Number of people employed by CBVs 6.1.d Value of support to social and economic activities 6.1.e Annual percentage increase in returns • CBV financial reports • audit reports • project reports • CBV reports • audit reports • project reports • CBV reports • interviews • project reports • CBV reports • interviews • project reports • CBV financial reports • audit reports • project reports 6.2 GVL products and services effectively linked to regional and international markets MA6.2.1 Provision of seed funding for CBVs Activities 6.2.1 ??? 6.2.a Volume of sales of GVL products and services 6.2.b Value of strategic agreements 6.2.c Value of resources raised • CBV reports • interviews • project reports • CBV reports • interviews • project reports • CBV reports • interviews • project reports AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 85 Results Framework PROJECT: Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context PROJECT DURATION: 36 months May 2002 - April 2005 PROJECT COST: US$ 1,999,959 Expanded sustainable economic opportunities for rural sector growth Greater Virunga Landscape better conserved Virunga Landscape in Uganda better managed IR2 Key strategies for threat abatement implemented IR4 National and regional policy improved IR3 Regional frameworks strengthened IR1 Landscape planning and monitoring approach applied to GVL IR5 Protected areas serving as ecological and economic core areas of the landscape IR6 Expanded economic opportunities for rural communities in GVL IR5.1 Priority actions of Bwindi and Mgahinga GMPs implemented IR6.1 Opportunities for CBVs identified and developed MA5.1.1 Development of additional infrastructure in BINP and MGNP MA5.1.2 Support to UWA for specific NRM activities MA5.1.3 Training for BINP and MGNP staff MA5.1.4 Provision of basic field equipment to BINP and MGNP IR5.2 UWA management decisions strengthened by monitoring and research MA5.2.1 Support to UWA/ITFC for joint research and monitoring activities MA6.1.1 Commercial opportunities assessed for parks, periphery, and other areas in GVL MA6.1.2 Study tours/capacity building for target community-based enterprises MA6.1.3 Support for structuring CBVs IR6.2 GVL products and services effectively linked to regional and international markets MA6.2.1 Provision of seed funding for CBVs MA1.1 Implementation of AWF HCP MA2.1 Implementation of strategies to address key threats MA3.1 Supporting participation of Uganda in regional GVL activities MA4.1 Support to UWA and the national/ regional policy context MA4.2 Economic valuation of natural resources and ecological processes in GVL USAID SO7 GOAL PROJECT PURPOSE INTERMEDIATE RESULTS MAJOR ACTIVITIES SO Strategic Objective IR Intermediate Result MA Major Activity GVL Greater Virunga Landscape GMP General Management Plan CBV Conservation Business Venture HCP Heartlands Conservation Planning AWF African Wildlife Foundation UWA Uganda Wildlife Authority ITFC Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation BINP Bwindi Impenetrable National Park MGNP Mgahinga Gorilla National Park AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 86 Annex 6. Review of HCP process - Summary of Questionnaire results Review of HCP impacts Average scores by 24 respondents Questions 1. The objectives of the site conservation planning were made clear 8.6 out of 10 2. Has your organization participated in the HCP process before? 83% said yes 3. Have you as an individual participated in the HCP process before 54% said yes 4. Key threats to the identified conservation targets have been effectively and accurately identified. 7.6 out of 10 5. Effective strategies have been identified to address the key threats. 7.7 out of 10 6. Do you think partners not present in the HCP process has been informed of the HCP plan and understand it. 9% said yes 7. All partners identified as being able to contribute to implementation of the HCP have been given a copy of the February 2003 HCP workshop report. 4.5 out of 10 8. Non-conservation organisations operating in the Heartland (e.g. agricultural / community development projects, CBOs, Private sector etc) have been involved in planning and / or lobbied to consciously contribute to implementing heartland conservation strategies and actions. 5.3 out of 10 9. Other staff of the key partner institutions who were NOT present at the HCP planning meeting have been informed of the HCP process by colleagues who WERE present. 3.5 out of 10 10. The role of leadership and coordination for the HCP planning and implementation process in your region / country has been clearly defined, and adopted. (If defined, please state who is leading/coordinating) 6.0 out of 10 11. The Range of National Partners has adopted the HCP Plan as their own. 3.9 out of 10 12. Did you modify any of your plans/activities based on your participation in the process? If yes, please provide details below: 57% said yes 13. HCP has assisted partner organisations to fund-raise for those activities identified as their respective responsibilities. 3.2 out of 10 14. Funding sources have been found to implement threat abatement strategies 4.1 out of 10 15. Partners not present in the HCP process have contributed to the implementation of the plan 4.3 out of 10 16. Heartland Monitoring plan has been developed 3.5 out of 10 17. Heartland Monitoring Plan has been implemented and data collected and compiled into a Monitoring System (PIMA or other). 3.1 out of 10 18. Conservation Targets have been monitored and shown to be improving since 2003 4.7 out of 10 19. Key threats have been reduced since the HCP Plan (2003) 4.4 out of 10 20. Did you learn anything new during the process? 100% said yes AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 87 Annex 7. Decisions influenced by ITFC Project USAID funds Information provided Means by which information provided Management response - decision or action taken or pending, etc. Year - Availability of requested species Report, meetings Harvest quotas set 1997-98 Planning for potential commercialisation of forest resources. 2002 Yes Assessment of sustainability of off￾take Report, presentations, personal contacts 2004 Yes Changing demands and context for MU resources Report, presentations, participation in review process Undertaking review process, incorporating new information, including new specific groups (e.g. Batwa) and new resource demands. 2004-5 EMP – Multiple use Yes Methods for resource harvest monitoring Report, workshop UWA developing national standards for resource harvest monitoring 2004 EMP – GIS mapping - Distribution of key harvest areas, areas of multiple use zones. Maps, meetings Revision of delineation of MU zones, and creation of new zones 1999-2000 EMP – Bamboo rhizome harvest - Rhizome harvest guidelines, impact of harvest on bamboo regeneration Guidelines document, report Used in management of rhizome harvest programme 1999 EMP – Bamboo assessments Yes – IGCP Baseline assessment of status of bamboo in Mgahinga and Echuya, recommendations for experimental harvest Reports, personal contacts. Establishment of long-term monitoring programmes for bamboo. Development of offtake quotas (Echuya). Experimental harvest plots (pending) 2004-2005 EMP – Fire monitoring Yes – PMP Causes and extent of fire damage Background information and discussion of fire management options Reports, Discussion document, training workshops Development of fire management plan. Equipment acquired, community sensitisation, park staff training. Boundary maintenance at critical dry periods 2003-2005 EMP – Kabiranyuma swamp monitoring Yes Impact of water harvest on swamp ecosystem Report, presentations Used in planning for rehabilitation of scheme. Also used in hydrological assessment. 2003-2005 EMP – Climate monitoring - Annual and seasonal weather patterns Report, data summaries Incorporated in fire management plans. Information for tour operators. Used by various research projects. 2000-2005 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 88 Project USAID funds Information provided Means by which information provided Management response - decision or action taken or pending, etc. Year EMP – Water quality Yes - PMP Impact of past and present human activities on forest ‘health’ – vegetation structure, regeneration Report, presentations, personal contacts, participation in EIA. Ranger based water quality monitoring programme proposed for other protected areas. Planning of Buhoma gravity water scheme. Management of tourism, garbage disposal in Buhoma area. 2000-2005 Fish populations Yes Fish species present in rivers, illegal harvest of fish. Personal contacts Incorporated in MU review process (pending). Law enforcement focusing on fish harvest. 2004-5 Vegetation mapping using aerial photos Yes - PMP Inaccuracies in boundary mapping Personal contacts Rectification of the boundary in GIS database (pending) 2005 Gap dynamics - Gap sizes, regeneration, causes and impacts of logging Report, publication, presentations Information to justify not harvesting timber from Bwindi 2002 - Distribution of exotic plant species Report, discussion document Intention to remove exotics from Bwindi. Initiating removal of Eucalyptus in Ruhija 2003 - Distribution of illegal activities Report, personal contacts Focused patrols on specific areas 2002-3 - Poor boundary marking and encroachment in certain areas Report, personal contacts Improved boundary maintenance 2003-4 Edge effects - General pattern of edge effects and boundary issues Presentation to UWA headquarters Better awareness of boundary management issues 2004 Impacts of tourism on gorilla behaviour Yes Impact of tourist visits on gorilla behaviour Presentations, summary reports Increase distance rule to 7 m (also based on IGCP health recommendations) Better understanding of impacts and ways to minimise. Guide training. 2003 Yes Information on gorilla population trends and distribution, signs of other large mammals Summary reports, presentations Possibly used in management plan zoning? Gorilla censuses in 2003-5 Bwindi and Virungas Yes Increase in levels of illegal activities Maps, presentations, personal contacts Improved patrol strategies, particular in park interior 2003 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 89 Project USAID funds Information provided Means by which information provided Management response - decision or action taken or pending, etc. Year Gorilla ecology and behaviour - Information on gorilla behaviour, diet, habitat utilisation, ranging patterns Summary reports, publications, presentations Information for interpretation for tourists. Used in developing buffer zone management strategies for Nkuringo Gorillas use of regenerating zone in Mgahinga - Diet, ranging patterns, use of regenerating zone Presentation, personal contacts Project carried out by UWA staff 2003-5 Nkuringo buffer zone management Yes Recommendations for mitigating human-gorilla conflict Discussion document, participation in planning meetings Land purchased at Nkuringo, set-up buffer zone, testing barriers and buffer crops 2002-5 Reducing costs of conservation - Pattern of problem animal conflicts around Bwindi, Echuya and Queen Elizabeth and potential solutions. Report, CARE workshop Development of new PAC initiatives (CARE) 2003 Mauritius thorn as a “Living Fence” - Information on potential invasiveness, growth patterns and guidelines for management Reports, presentations Use of Mauritius thorn for problem animal control in Northern sector of Bwindi 2004 Porcupine crop￾raiding in MGNP - Crop-raiding patterns, effectiveness of stone wall and other prevention measures Report, presentation Need to repair and extend stone wall 2002 ICD strategies assessment project Yes Effectiveness of ICD strategies Presentations, report (summary/draft, final pending). Incorporated in project planning (PRIME, CARE, PEMA, AWF-IGCP HCP process, MBIFCT) 2003-4 Evaluating conservation policy – ICD in Bwindi - Impact of law enforcement and multiple use on poaching levels PhD thesis, presentations 2005 Echuya knowledge base review - Summaries of available information on Echuya Report, workshop Establishing future research and monitoring priorities (pending), used in development of Echuya management plan. 2005 Large mammal use of gaps - Data on large mammal use of gaps Presentation (Report pending) 2004-5 Impacts of fire on forest regeneration - Data on regeneration in burnt areas and neighbouring natural forest Presentation (MSc pending) 2004-5 AWF / IGCP Conservation of Afro-montane Forest and Mountain Gorillas in a Landscape Context End of Project Review Mission: July-August 2005 90 Project USAID funds Information provided Means by which information provided Management response - decision or action taken or pending, etc. Year Impact of exotic trees in MGNP - Distribution of exotic trees and impacts on regeneration MSc thesis Removal of exotics in regenerating zone of MGNP (based on previous work) 1999 Regeneration and Restoration MGNP Yes Protocol to assess factors constraining regeneration Discussion document, personal contacts Assessment project underway, lead by UWA 2005 Stingless bees ecology in BINP - Ecology, distribution of nests, illegal harvesting. Presentation (PhD thesis pending) Understanding of use of Stingless bee nests/honey by local communities. Incorporated in Multiple Use review 2004 Dioscorea ecology and utilisation in Bwindi - Potential as a multiple use “wild food” resource. Harvesting techniques Presentation Understanding of use of Dioscorea root use by local communities. Incorporated in Multiple Use review 2004 Regeneration in the Mbwa River Tract - Levels of regeneration, and presence of exotic species Report, presentation Need of long term monitoring of regeneration 2002