From forests to farms

Mozambique’s inselberg rainforests are increasingly under threat of deforestation, with satellite data and imagery showing nearly all have lost forest cover over the past two decades. Mount Nallume has been one of the most heavily affected, with satellite imagery taken earlier in the year showing it’s lost upward of 30 percent of its forest cover over the past 10 years. In another 15 years, Bayliss reckons the forest could all be gone; possibly even in less than a decade if deforestation rates stay this high.

“As population increases, pressure on the forests also increases. The forests get smaller and there is greater clearance of trees. So proportionally over time, more forests will be depleted if this carries on at the same rate we are seeing,” Bayliss tells Mongabay.

According to Bayliss, the biggest threat to Mount Nallume is agriculture. He says that overfarmed lowland soil is losing its fertility, driving farmers higher and higher up the mountain in search of more arable land.

“However this is very short sighted as well because this soil will also lose its nutrients after a few years and so the next plot of forest is cleared … and on it goes,” Bayliss said.

New cropland cut from forest is readily apparent, with a clearing about the size of half a football field recently made just 50 meters (160 feet) from where the team has camped atop Mount Nallume. The felled trees are covered in soot from the burning that followed. Tomato and cassava seedlings sprout from the tilled ground.

When Bayliss approached the clearing, he found a man with a gun sitting in front of a makeshift hut. Assuming he was a local who could not communicate in English, Bayliss went back to camp to fetch other team members, including another resident from the area and a translator who speaks both English and Portuguese.

But when they arrived back at the clearing, the man was gone. Instead, they found something else which they think may have been the reason why the man took off: knee-high cannabis plants growing around the hut.

Growing and using cannabis is illegal in Mozambique, Muianga says. And, she adds, so is cutting down trees.

Muianga later spoke to locals in Nacopa village about the issue of forest clearance. According to them, local rivers like the Namaita, which are fed by water sources in Mount Nallume forests, have started to dry up. They say that because of this, they do not have enough water to farm maize, sorghum, millet, cassava and cowpeas. The only way to keep producing food for their families, they argue, is to farm on the mountain.

But as cropland creeps higher up the mountain and displaces more and more forest, researchers warn that farmers could be worsening the very situation they’re trying to escape.

“The forests act as a sponge to absorb and preserve water,” Bayliss said. “When the trees are cut down the water will disappear.”

Logging and fire

Agriculture isn’t the only human pressure impacting the forests of Nallume and other inselbergs in the region. Timber harvesting for construction materials and charcoal are also taking a toll.

At various spots along the 300-kilometer (190-mile) stretch from the city of Nampula to the foot of Mount Nallume, loads of charcoal packed in 90-kilogram (200-pound) sacks line the highway for purchase by passing motorists. Locals pedal rickety bicycles and struggle with piles of freshly cut timber poles as they head toward the nearest shopping center. Trucks loaded with wood are stopped at checkpoints, awaiting clearance by the highway authorities.

Some of these trucks, Bayliss says, are heading to the ports of Quelimane and Beira, where the timber will be offloaded and shipped to markets in Asia.

“If you drive to those ports, on the approach to those cities and towns, you will pass many logging warehouses, all of them full of hardwood that has been extracted from mainly the woodland areas of northern and central Mozambique,” Bayliss says. “But it is only a matter of time before the commercial loggers arrive at places where there is other timber.”

According to Bayliss, this wood is being harvested unsustainably from Mozambique’s forests. He also suspects bribery and corruption may be involved.

“There is a lot of money being made. These shipments are not being checked. Mozambique is losing its forests very fast through commercial logging and illegal exports,” he says, adding that around 48 percent of northern Mozambique woodland has already been lost.

Soil and timber aren’t the only things for which Nallume’s forests are being exploited. According to 51-year-old Raimundo Machava from Nacopa village, they are also rich in medicinal plants that the locals use for treatments because they do not have access or money to afford Western medicine. Machava says residents also depend on the forests for food, and that they often start bushfires to push animals like rabbits into snares they have laid in the forest.

Through his research into the influence of climate change and human pressure on ecosystems in eastern and central Africa, Phil Platts has found that communities may also be unknowingly starting fires on Nallume. He says when the lowlands are burned for agriculture and charcoal, sometimes hot embers are carried by the wind up to the mountain where they can ignite vegetation.

Platts says fires are also sometimes started naturally; for example, by a lightning strike. He says these types of fires typically stop at the edge of the forests, but prolonged dry seasons can exacerbate them and make them more destructive than they normally would be.

Platts warns that without intervention, fires on Nallume can burn up and dry out entire tracts of forest. And if its forests die, the mountain will no longer be able to feed the Namaita River and other water sources that the surrounding ecosystems and human communities rely on.

“That is what we have seen in some areas,” Platt says. “Any disturbance on these forests could leave them very vulnerable to collapsing into drier systems and then they will no longer be able to take moisture out of the air.”

Protection urgently needed

Local chief Alberto Americo says Mozambique’s isolated inselberg forests are often considered sacred by the communities that surround them. He says that in some instances when the rains have failed, a group of elders go up the mountains and into the forests to perform traditional rituals.

“These rites are very sacred and keep us protected by our gods,” Americo said. “We cannot even perform them in the presence of strangers. The forests give us our livelihoods.”

And this, Bayliss reckons, is the underlying problem. He says the fact that the forests only have the protection of traditional district authorities with limited enforcement abilities and not the government of Mozambique makes them highly vulnerable to human encroachment and climate change.

“Basically there is no one there to stop [deforestation],” Bayliss says. “The authorities are yet to take any action to prevent the cutting of these upland forests. There are no government patrols at any of the mountain sites in Mozambique.”

Mongabay reached out to the Mozambique government for comment, but received no reply.

Machava says Mount Nallume is claimed by three traditional districts — Ribaue, Micuburre and Murrupula — which can lead to conflict as residents of each scramble for resources. Bayliss says this conflict may dampen the protection effectiveness of the district authorities.

“This possibly makes it a bit more complicated because there might be competing local forces involved in extracting from the forests,” Bayliss says. “This might make it more difficult to try and slow down or stop deforestation.”