Maliasili

The district’s natural resources sector is comprised of various sub-sectors including forestry, bee-keeping, Land and wildlife. The size of forests which cover the district is about 1,656.62. Kilometre square which is equivalent to 12.41 percent of the district land area of 13339 square kilometres. Due to high rate of deforestation which are being  caused by human activities such as cutting trees for burning charcoal and fire wood, over grazing as well as clearing bushes for farming purposes, made the district to have a serious shortage of natural forests and distorted ecosystems as well as water catchments areas.  But Natural resources contribute a greater percentage of the district own source annual budget collection as table and figure below shows.

Forestry
Forestry sector in Rufiji District is well described in the forest Action Plan through Bibliographical analysis. In Rufiji the Forest refers to woodland, coastal forest and mangroves in the tidal of forest in the Delta.
Rufiji district has forests that harbour unique diverse flora and fauna which show much endemism. They provide a variety of forest products such as fruits, medicine, logs, wood fuel, honey and beeswax, fibres to support the surrounding communities; as well as environmental functions such as mitigating climate change especially its contribution to carbon sink, soil and water conservation It can be noted that more than 60% of the revenue collected by Rufiji District comes from forests.

Over last decade the Forests in Rufiji have become under increasing pressure from unsustainable human activities including: illegal timber harvesting; shifting cultivation (slush and burn) farming system; pole cutting and forest fires. The commercial demand of timber and charcoal are main factor explaining the situation because of the relative proximity of Dar –es- Salaam. For example the quantities of charcoal produced and traded from Rufiji have been multiplied by 2, 3 during the past ten years. The illegal harvesting of wood has extended even to the local and national forest reserves due to the inadequate human and financial capacities of the Forest Department.