Trees provide a wealth of useful products. People use trees and their products for:

• Construction – huts and houses, fences
• Food – fruits, roots and bark, macimbi and honey
• Medical purposes
• Fodder for livestock
• Tools – farming implements, handles, traditional plates, spoons, pestle and mortar, furniture
• Rope
• Energy – fuel wood especially for people with no electricity or other fuel sources

• Trees produce oxygen and reduce carbon dioxide
• Trees enhance soil conservation – the leaves reduce the impact of the large erosive raindrops
• Leaves and litter enhance soil fertility by forming humus
• Roots bind soil to reduce soil erosion, hence increasing infiltration of water into the ground, which then finds its way to springs, rivers, wells and boreholes

• Maintaining trees and forests enhances and improves the scenic value of the landscape
• Such landscapes attract wild animals, which provide marketable products such as photographic and hiking safaris, trophy hunting safaris, skins and game meat
• Trees increase the value of land for eco-tourism and related enterprises
• Trees sustain and increase wild fruit yields for the farmer to harvest, process and market
• Trees provide wild edible worms; madora/macimbi, and beetles; harurwa – which people can harvest, process and market
• They provide shelter and windbreaks for crops and homesteads
• Woodlands promote cloud formation and hence rain
• They reduce the chances and incidence of flooding
• They provide the ingredients for many traditional medicines

• Degradation of land by erosion, leads to loss of the fertile topsoil, resulting in reduced crop yields and loss of grazing as seen in Seke, Chiweshe, Zvimba and Ntabazinduna
• Increased flooding and negative impacts associated therewith
• Reduced amount of rainfall
• Gullies and denuded bad lands
• Walking long distances for firewood collection and other forest products, which leaves less time for other productive activities
• Losing hard earned cash to buy forest products such as firewood and medicines that are otherwise available from the local woodlands

• Continued tree cutting and selling of timber, by the roadside, by ferrying to towns and growth centres, or for tobacco curing
• Cutting of large trees or branches to harvest fruit, Madora, and other edible insects
• Fires
• Woodcraft
• Burning down trees to access honey, which kills bees and destroys trees
• Cutting down trees in grazing areas, mountains and land not required for cropping
• Destructive medical collection from trees through complete removal of the bark around the stem
• Cutting of tap root or main roots of the tree for medical uses

This can be done by:

• Collecting seeds, establishing nurseries and transplanting young trees
• Taking cuttings and planting young mature stems
• Coppicing –coppices are shoots that grow from the stump after a tree has been cut, then grow into a new tree
• Planting truncheons – larger cuttings usually planted to make living fences
• Planting stumps – short stumps with taproots are planted especially in very dry areas.

• Tending them – water adequately and remove weed
• Pruning them – to encourage the tree to branch higher up, thus saving the shoots and stems from livestock
• Pollarding them – cutting off the top of a tree, out of the reach of livestock, which produces more shoots and stems above the cut
• Removing excess shoots growing from ground level, to promote thick healthy stems
• Controlling pests – ensuring trees are not damaged or destroyed by pests

Compiled by: J. Z. Nyilika

Community Development Officer

WEZ & Painted Dog Conservation