NDLI: Stone walls and sacred forest conservation in Ethiopia

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Woods, Carrie L. Cardelús, Catherine L. Scull, Peter Wassie, Alemayehu Baez, Mabel Klepeis, Peter
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	Many tropical forests worldwide are protected due to their sacredness to religious communities. In the south Gondar region of Ethiopia, most of the remaining native forests are tiny fragments (5.42 ha ± 0.34) surrounded by pasture and agriculture that are protected because they encompass churches of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC). A small number of communities have erected stone walls around the perimeter of the forests to demarcate the boundary, and/or protect the interior of the forest. We evaluated the effectiveness of these walls at protecting ecological conditions by examining tree and seedling communities among sacred forests with and without walls in Montane and Upper Montane sites. We found the wall to be an effective conservation tool as regeneration potential was higher in forests with a wall. The density and species richness of seedlings were significantly higher in forests with a wall and these effects were more pronounced in Upper Montane forests. Forests with a wall also had seedlings of many native tree species that were not found in forests without walls. As expected, there were few differences in tree communities in forests with and without a wall. Although rare on the landscape, the presence of a stone wall around these forests was effective at protecting the seedling community because it likely reduced access to the forests by grazers and directed human visitors to trails. The use of a stone wall may protect seedling communities in other sacred forest fragments, particularly for those that are small, isolated, surrounded by agriculture, and have a depleted seed bank.
Starting Page	209
Ending Page	221
Page Count	13
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09603115
Journal	Biodiversity and Conservation
Volume Number	26
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	15729710
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2016-10-31
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Afromontane forest Church forest Deforestation Forest fragmentation Regeneration potential Seedlings Biodiversity Ecology Conservation Biology/Ecology Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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