• Summary
• Text account
• Data table and detailed info
• Map
• Reference and further resources

Site description (2001 baseline)
Most of the natural vegetation in Thyolo District disappeared with the establishment of extensive tea estates around the beginning of the twentieth century. It must have consisted largely of moist Brachystegia or transition woodland (miombo interspersed with evergreen species), with rainforest in stream depressions and on the summit of Thyolo Mountain. Forest existed in a continuum down to the lower levels (c.1,000 m) around the mountain. This is no longer the situation, but a dozen patches of lowland rainforest have been preserved privately amid the tea fields to the north-east and within 2–10 km of Thyolo Mountain. They lie in stream depressions, at c.1,050 m, with a tall canopy of mainly Albizia gummifera and Khaya anthotheca (syn. K. nyasica). The three most important patches visited in the 1980s were on the estates of Mwalantunzi (93 ha), Namingomba (80 ha) and Mikundi (40 ha).

Key biodiversity
See Box and Tables 2 and 3 for key species. Some 50 species have been recorded so far; these forest remnants are important for their relatively high densities of Apalis chariessa (6–7 pairs/100 ha) and Oriolus chlorocephalus (4–7 pairs/100 ha). In addition, one species of the Zambezian biome occurs (Table 3) while five Afrotropical Highlands biome species are winter visitors; see Table 3.

Non-bird biodiversity: None known to BirdLife International.

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Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Thyolo tea estates (Malawi). Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/thyolo-tea-estates-iba-malawi on 22/11/2024.