Local Knowledge on the Influence of Land Use/Cover Changes and Conservation Threats on Avian Community in the Kilombero Wetlands, Tanzania

Local knowledge of the history and ecology of wetland ecosystems is very useful in wetland re-sources management, especially when other historical ecological information is not available andcan be integrated with scientific knowledge to introduce better management of resources. Theaims of this paper were to assess existing local knowledge on land use/cover changes in the Ki-lombero wetlands, thereafter investigate local knowledge on its effect on avian population in thewetland and identify factors influencing local knowledge on such changes in the study area. Ran-dom sampling was used to obtain representative sample population for this study. Structuredquestionnaire and focus group discussions were used to extract information from local people insix villages. Study results from multi-response analysis showed that natural forests had been con-verted into cropland and bushed grassland, grassland to crop land, grassland to grazed land, for-est to settlement and grassland to settlement. Land use change was singled out as primary cause ofdecrease in avian community in the wetland. Threats to the conservation of avian species wereidentified as livestock grazing, drought, use of poison, traps and bush meat hunting for food. Ageand education level were seen as determinants of household’s knowledge on the ecologicalchanges. This pool of existing knowledge is important among wetland users and stakeholders inorder to generate conservation strategies of the wetland ecosystem.Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU)program through the project NUFU-TZ 2007/10229