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Sacred Church Forests in Northern Ethiopia: Biodiversity and Cultural Islands

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Biodiversity Islands: Strategies for Conservation in Human-Dominated Environments

Part of the book series: Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation ((TOBC,volume 20))

Abstract

Sacred forests, protected due to their religious importance, form a vast network of informal and often inadvertent (shadow) conservation sites worldwide. Despite socioeconomic and political pressures increasing deforestation worldwide, these shadow conservation sites are remarkable in their ability to resist these pressures through their cultural, religious, and social significance. In this chapter we discuss our research on the sacred forests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC), the dominant religion in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has 11% forest cover distributed in a patchwork of forest fragments which are, in many regions, the only repository of biodiversity, including many endemic and endangered species. In the South Gondar Region (14,607 km2) of northern Ethiopia, around 1022 of these forest fragments are sacred forests that surround churches of the EOTC. Despite their small size, on average 5.2 hectares (range 1.7–148.9 ha), they constitute 100% of the forests in the region. High levels of biodiversity, including endangered and endemic taxa, endow these forests with great value. They provide essential ecosystem services to the surrounding community and are integral to the rituals and culture of the EOTC. Far from being static cultural and religious relics scattered throughout the Ethiopian landscape, these sacred church forests are complex and dynamic socio-ecological systems. We discuss EOTC forests as islands of biocultural diversity, their central role in local communities, the ecosystem services they provide, and the threats they face. We base our observations on a 10-year (2010–2020) interdisciplinary research project where we explore the mechanisms of the religious management of EOTC church forests.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the respected Ethiopian priests and monks who allowed us access to their sacred church forests. We would like to acknowledge the students of the Cardelús and Scull labs at Colgate University, the Woods lab at the University of Puget Sound, and the Tsegay lab at the University of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, for their contributions to the lab and field work. We want to thank Ben Everett-Lane for his editorial work and feedback on our revisions. We also want to thank our reviewers Dr. Alison Ormsby and Dr. Keith Kirby. This work was funded through the Dynamics of Coupled Natural Human Ecosystems Program of the National Science Foundation [Award No. 1518501] and by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [Award No. DGE 1842473]. Initial work was funded by The Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute at Colgate University: http://www.colgate.edu/centers-and-institutes/picker-interdisciplinary-science-institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Mabel Baez Schon

  2. Department of Biology, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, USA

    Carrie L. Woods

  3. Department of Biology, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA

    Catherine L. Cardelús

Authors
  1. Mabel Baez Schon
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  2. Carrie L. Woods
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  3. Catherine L. Cardelús
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Correspondence to Mabel Baez Schon .

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  1. School of the Environment, The Forest School, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Florencia Montagnini

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Baez Schon, M., Woods, C.L., Cardelús, C.L. (2022). Sacred Church Forests in Northern Ethiopia: Biodiversity and Cultural Islands. In: Montagnini, F. (eds) Biodiversity Islands: Strategies for Conservation in Human-Dominated Environments. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92234-4_21

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