Eastern Tropical African Centre of Endemism: A candidate for World Heritage status?

Abstract

Together with the Coastal Forests and Eastern Arc rainshadow, the Eastern Arc forests make up a botanical Centre of Endemism in Eastern Tropical Africa (CEETA), which covers a wide range of vegetation formations in four different phytochoria. The factors that gave rise to the concentration of restricted-range taxa in the different vegetation types appear to result from the same long-term geological and climatic processes. The endemic-rich vegetation types occur in three countries: Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya and are managed under a wide range of land tenure arrangements from public land and private ownership, to Forest Reserve, Game Reserve and National Park. Much of the CEET A is recognised as a biodiversity ‘hotspot' of global importance, but lacks a common management strategy. A possible common framework within which to develop an appropriate strategy is that of the World Heritage Convention. The case of the Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Site is discussed as a comparative example.



Journal of East African Natural History Vol. 87 (1&2) 1998: pp. 359-366