The Mount Mabu forest in Mozambique, called the “butterfly forest,” now has legal protection that puts local people in charge. A decree published Aug. 24 set aside about 23,000 acres as a community conservation area, Mongabay reported. The plan that sets its rules is still being written.
At a glance
- Protected area: The decree covers 9,341 hectares, or 23,082 acres, in Lugela district, Zambézia province, Mongabay reported.
- Community stewardship: The land is dedicated to using and protecting natural resources by the local communities that have kept the forest for generations.
- Wildlife: Scientists have recorded more than 200 kinds of butterflies there, and the true total could reach 250.
How the Mount Mabu forest conservation area works
The Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries issued the decree. Specific limits will come from a management plan that is not yet final, Mongabay reported.
Communities will run the area through a council, and people will need licenses to use its resources, Club of Mozambique reported, citing Lusa news agency. The ministry will monitor it and build local skills.
BIOFUND, a trust fund in Mozambique, said the order is Ministerial Diploma No. 69/2026. The government presented it to the communities at a ceremony in Lugela on Sept. 11.
What the Mount Mabu forest protects
Every October and November, hundreds of butterflies gather on the 5,600-foot summit in the morning. Scientists call this mating behavior hilltopping. Naturalist David Attenborough documented it in 2013 C.E. and lent the mountain its nickname, Mongabay reported.
Mongabay also reported that more than 30 species, including frogs, chameleons, bats, and insects, have been found at Mabu since 2005 C.E. One of them, a cobalt-blue butterfly named Iolaus mabuensis, is known from a single specimen.
Ecologist Julian Bayliss led several surveys there over 20 years. He told Mongabay the forests have “high levels of endemism,” meaning many species live nowhere else. He was also the first scientist to meet the Mount Mabu forest viper, Atheris mabuensis, described in 2009 C.E.
A 2014 C.E. study in the journal Oryx, by Bayliss and colleagues, said Mabu may be the largest unbroken block of its forest type in southern Africa. It put the intact rainforest at about 19,500 acres.
How the area came about
“It’s a great relief,” Bayliss said. José Monteiro, executive director of ReGeCom, a group working with the communities, said, “The community, over a long time, kept the forest standing.”
Eleven community committees now work together as CONSERVAMabu, BIOFUND reported. The European Union funds the work, and a consortium led by WWF, with ReGeCom and RADEZA, works on the ground.
ReGeCom said about 15,000 people live around the forest. It said the declaration came about two years after the proposal was submitted, and called it the start of a new phase, not the finish line.
What remains unresolved
The management plan is not final, so the limits on activity are not yet set. The total of 250 butterfly kinds is a possible figure pending more surveys, not a count.
The main threats are the spread of small-scale farming and logging, according to a 2024 C.E. proposal that Mongabay reviewed. The same proposal calls the area well conserved and sacred to locals.
Not everyone sees it the same way. Grassroots International reported in 2025 C.E. that Justiça Ambiental, the Mozambican arm of Friends of the Earth, worked with four communities near Mount Mabu on legal land titles.
The project names protection that limits local land use among the threats it works against. Coverage of the new order does not say if those titles were granted.
What comes next
BIOFUND listed next steps: more beekeeping and farming, nature tourism, and training so CONSERVAMabu can sign deals and run itself.
It also stressed the need for longer-term funding. EU representative Anne-Aël Pohu said, “A five-year programme cannot by itself achieve significant change.”
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay and BIOFUND
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Angola creates 54,000-acre reserve for its highest peak, Mount Moco
- Papua New Guinea clans to protect 300,000 acres of rainforest for tree kangaroos
- The Good News for Humankind archive on forest protection
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