Making Chiradzulu Mountain green again

Two communities at the foot of Chiradzulu Mountain have taken a bold step to take care of the degraded landscapes that have suffered years of deforestation.

Being a district that is close to Blantyre, where there is the ever-growing demand for charcoal, Chiradzulu Mountain has lost its trees to meet the commercial capital’s energy needs.

Chiradzulu’s own ballooning population has also contributed to the wanton cutting down of trees as people turned to the forest reserve to get fuelwood for home use and brick production.

But a few years of forest restoration efforts by the environmentally-conscious members from Dokotala and Nkupu villages have started paying dividends.

Those travelling along the Blantyre-Zomba Road can easily notice the greenery that is standing out in a distance as they pass through Njuli Trading Centre.

While they celebrate that the natural regeneration is working, the communities feel there is need for strategies that will ensure that they make money from the rejuvenated forest.

Group village head Dokotala says the mountain offers tourism opportunities that can help the communities generate income from the natural resources sustainably.

“Most areas do not have forests. We are among the few areas that have thriving forests. We also have interesting rock formations where people visit for prayer and meditation. We need to publicise these things so that tourists can be visiting us,” he says.

He says the forest also sits in an area where leprosy victims were buried.

“We take care of the graves as a way of preserving history of how leprosy devastated communities. The area also has hyena caves which can be of great interest to nature lovers,” he says.

The traditional leader bemoans bushfires that come from the area managed by the Department of Forestry, a thing that slows down the conservation effort.

“When bushfires break, we alert each other and we go out to extinguish the fire,” he says.

The village head says the fires affect growth of regenerants.  He, however, says their fire management efforts are bearing fruit as trees in the forest have a high survival rate.

Dokotala village natural resources committee chairperson Kingsley Amon says the Department of Forestry needs to put its act together in fire management.

“The fire comes from the area that is managed by the government. They need to put in place strategies that will help in stopping the bushfires from the source,” he says.

Chiradzulu district forestry assistant Andrew Basikolo admits that the bushfires emanate from an area where there was a eucalyptus plantation which was harvested a couple of years ago.

“Since we harvested the eucalyptus, we have not replanted the area. This has created a vacuum in which poachers have moved in to start fires,” he says.

Coordination Union for the Rehabilitation of the Environment (Cure) executive director Charles Mkoka says through support from Germany-based International Climate Initiative, the two communities are being empowered to overcome challenges they face in natural resource management.

“We are strengthening the community’s resilience towards climate change,” says Mkoka.

He says Cure is ensuring that challenges that communities are facing are addressed for the sake of continuity of the initiatives.

“We have brought the two communities together to create a platform for exchanging ideas, to gauge the successes that they have registered and, more importantly, to learn from the challenges,” he says.

Mkoka notes that the communities are sharpening their skills in nursery management, beekeeping, storm bands creation and development of the forests into tourism attraction.

The restoration of the mountain’s greenery is the first step in turning Chiradzulu Mountain into a tourist attraction, according to Mkoka.

And there is hope that the step taken will lead to a journey of a thousand miles.