BGCI: Brackenhurst Botanic Garden, Kenya and Tooro Botanical Gardens, Uganda

BACKGROUND

This paper presents a summary of a project implemented in East Africa by BCGI. Africa experiences a net loss of 3.4 million hectares of forest annually from data available for the period 2000-2010. Despite a steep rise in the number of forest management plans in place across Africa, and a small increase in the area of protected forest (FAO, 2010), high reliance on wood as a fuel source, continued forest conversion to agriculture and development and selective extraction of valuable  medicinal and timber species, continue to put pressure on Africa’s forests and forest resources.

GOALS & Approach

Recognising these challenges and that botanic gardens have good knowledge on how to propagate native species, BGCI launched a programme to support African botanic gardens to scale up their contribution to tree conservation and forest restoration. By supporting two botanical gardens, Tooro Botanical Garden in Uganda and Brackenhurst Botanic Garden in Kenya,BCGI purposed to enable both institutions to make their contributions through the  Ecological Restoration Alliance of Botanic Gardens (ERA).

Reported TAKEAWAYS

The two projects provide excellent demonstrations of the value of  botanic gardens in ecological restoration using indigenous restoration strategies. Since 2012, BGCI identified other African botanic gardens actively involved in forest restoration and raised c. £400,000 to work with botanic gardens in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Malawi to build their capacity for restoration using indegenous species.  Projects such as these integrate tree conservation, support surveys and collections trips for threatened tree species requiring planting and restoration.