Participatory resource mapping for adaptive collaborative management at Mt. Kasigau, Kenya

Adaptive collaborative management (ACM) is an interactive planning approach that involves local communities as important stakeholders in resource conservation. This study investigated how participatory research methods may be used to validate ethnoecological knowledge on the distribution of forest resources as an important first step toward ACM at Mt. Kasigau, the most northeastern mountain in the biologically rich Eastern Arc Mountains. Working in Makwasinyi and Jora villages, we facilitated resource-mapping sessions, compiled historical time lines, and recorded photos and narratives on transect walks. Men and women participants mapped different natural and human-constructed features that related to their gendered work activities, and especially showed a diversity of building and firewood resources across a transitional zone at the base of the mountain. Jora village participants mapped past settlements on the mountain and described how environmental change and extra-local forces influenced their movement down slope. These research techniques documented much gendered knowledge about the distribution of forest resources and how the Kasigau Taita spatially adapted their utilization patterns over time. The study participants broaden ACM toward a landscape plan that protects evergreen forests as watersheds and sustains safe access to material forest resources at the base of the mountain.