Fuelwood Resources and Forest Regeneration on Fallow Land in Uganda

East African forests have been largely converted to agriculture. The remaining forests hold many endangered species but are threatened by the heavy local demand for fuelwood. Here we evaluate fallow land in western Uganda as an alternate fuel source to diverse forests. We quantify the regeneration process on fallows, calculate tree biomass increases, and measure grass and woody herb biomass over 44 months. The biomass values we measured were typical or slightly below the average from 11 studies elsewhere in the tropics. Variation in biomass between our neighboring study sites exceeded that between sites on different continents, indicating the sensitivity of vegetation regeneration to local land use. Tree regeneration was extremely slow (0.46 g/m2/year); Lisa Naughton-Treves is Research Fellow for the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS), Conservation International, 1919 M Street, Washington, DC, and Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, 550 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706. Colin A. Chapman is Associate Professor, Department of Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, and Research Fellow for the Wildlife Conservation Society, 185th Street and Southern Boulevard, Bronx, NY 10460. Address correspondence to: Lisa Naughton-Treves at the above address (E-mail: [email protected]). During this study, Lisa Naughton-Treves was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and NSF (SBR 98-101444). Colin A. Chapman also received support from the Wildlife Conservation Society, as well as NSF (INT 93-08276, SBR 96-17664), National Geographic, and the Lindbergh Foundation. Research permission was granted by the Office of the President, Uganda, the National Research Council, the Uganda Wildlife Authority, and the Ugandan Forest Department. The authors thank Dan Nepstad for providing access to unpublished data and manuscripts. Adrian Treves, Lauren Chapman, Daniel Kammen, and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments on the manuscript. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Vol. 14(4) 2002 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 19 D ow nl oa de d by [ M cG ill U ni ve rs ity L ib ra ry ] at 1 3: 34 1 0 A ug us t 2 01 1 however, the woody herbs and grasses on a 4 year old fallow of ~0.5 ha can provide much of a family’s domestic fuel. Fallow land is generally abundant in western Uganda and can partially alleviate pressure on forests for domestic fuels. Fallows cannot however provide the trees demanded by charcoal, brick, and gin manufacturers. In the future, conserving forests while meeting fuelwood demands will require improving local land tenure security, enhancing the productivity of cultivated and abandoned land, promoting more efficient stoves, stills and kilns, and curtailing illicit, inefficient charcoal manufacture. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]