- Conservationists in eastern Tanzania have found two specimens of a rare tree feared to be extinct.
- Millettia sacleuxii was only known from six specimens in forest reserves that have almost disappeared.
- Thousands of seeds have been collected and seedlings raised, and these are due to be planted out as part of a reforestation project in the Nguru Mountains.
- The two surviving Millettia “mother trees” were found near an area that conservationists hope to soon turn into a wildlife corridor.
In July 2023, botanist Andrea Bianchi was driving in the Nguru Mountains of eastern Tanzania when the broad pods on a tree growing in a maize field near the road caught his eye. He pulled over and found not one but two Millettia sacleuxii trees, a species scientists had feared was extinct. Thousands of their seeds have since been collected and germinated so that they can be planted as part of a reforestation project.
M. sacleuxii is so rare the tree doesn’t have a common name in English. The local Kihehe language has only a generic name for it and other closely related forest Millettia species found in this region: muhafu.
Scientists previously knew the rare species from just three forest reserves in the Nguru and Usambara mountains. But two of the reserves were cleared decades ago and replaced with exotic timber and sugar plantations. The remaining reserve, near the town of Turiani, has been reduced to around 49 hectares (121 acres) surrounded by encroaching fields of rice and sugar.
“I was really worried about this species and fearing it may have gone extinct,” said Bianchi, the tropical forest restoration expert who spotted the surviving trees near the Mvaji River, not far from Turiani. Somehow they had survived being cut down for poles or firewood, or to make way for crops like most of the forest that once surrounded them.
One was shaded by a large fig, the other, 50 meters (160 feet) away, was crowded around by shrubs and exotic teak, meaning neither had been able to grow to its full size. But the very broad pods on both trees presented him with a unique opportunity to cultivate more.
Hundreds of pods on each tree exploded at the end of the dry season in October, scattering thousands of seeds. Seven thousand seeds were collected and taken to a tree nursery run by Bianchi and conservation group the PAMS Foundation, on the northwestern slopes of Nguru. The Nguru massif is one of a dozen mountain blocks forming a chain known as the Eastern Arc Mountains, and at the nursery near the village of Pemba, the botanist, with help from nursery workers drawn from the local community, sowed the seeds; 5,500 of them germinated into healthy seedlings….
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Corine Pelluchon: Ecology as new Enlightenment
The world is burning. Who can convince the comfortable classes of the radical sacrifices needed?
Richard Smyth: Nature does not care
Karl Marx in the Anthropocene: the post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan
After the truth-shower 