Mozambique just gave legal protection to the 'butterfly forest' of Mount Mabu

Mount Mabu, in northern Mozambique, is one of the wettest, wildest places in southern Africa — a mountain forest so rich that David Attenborough nicknamed it the 'butterfly forest,' and home, with neighbouring Mount Namuli, to at least 200 butterfly species. Scientist Julian Bayliss spent more than 20 years documenting it, finding species new to science, including a forest viper found nowhere else. Now the Mozambican government has set aside 23,000 acres (about 9,300 hectares) as the Mount Mabu Community Conservation Area, dedicated to protection 'by local communities' — the people who have long treated these mountains as sacred. A community management plan is being prepared, and a quarter of Mozambique's territory is now preserved in some form.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: policy reform