Our approach
Friends of Nilo Forest is a Swiss association in formation with one purpose: to strengthen the protection of the Nilo Nature Forest Reserve. Our first instrument is monitoring, built by students, one placement after another.
Measure what is happening
The rules to protect this forest exist. What is missing is knowledge of where and how fast logging, snaring and encroachment act. A boundary monitoring with GPS routes and incident logs provides that.
Build it with students
Each placement adds a building block: routes, village monitors, a species baseline, a protocol. Each participant hands over to the next. The association keeps the data and the continuity.
Coordinate with the Tanzania Forest Service
The Tanzania Forest Service manages the reserve. Our work is carried out in coordination with the Tanzania Forest Service and its ranger post in Amani. We do not replace the authority; we produce information it can use.
We complement the actors already working in this landscape; we do not want to replace them. Friends of Nilo Forest is small, has one forest and one instrument, and says so.
Why placements rather than volunteers
Earlier we thought of separate volunteer roles: building, patrolling, organising. In practice all three belong in one place, the field placement. Setting up a base, walking the boundary and organising village monitors are the work of a three to six month stay by someone who documents it for a thesis and hands it over. That produces continuity; short volunteer stints do not.
The base is the Annex of the Nilo Forest Lodge at the reserve boundary, a separate 15 m² building with its own terrace. Details are on the field placement page.
Field placement at Nilo Forest
Three to six months at the reserve boundary, own project, data for your thesis. Start possible now, rolling intake.