Ethiopian Orthodox church forests provide regulating and habitat services: evidence from stream sediment and aquatic insect analyses

Sacred natural sites as mensurative fragmentation experiments in long‐inhabited multifunctional landscapes

“…Even more, observational data collected at a few forests (e.g. stream water quality (LoTemplio et al ), soil quality (Liang et al ), seed predation (Wassie et al )) could be expanded to include many forests that span landscape gradients and thereby test hypotheses at both local and landscape scales. This option is particularly enticing for questions at the ecosystem level where replication is challenging.…”

“…holy forest sites only rarely entered or used), to more intensively managed sacred forest systems which may include permanent habitation by priests or monks, community prayer spaces for regular services or holidays, or extraction of wood, food, medicinal plants, holy water, and other forest resources (Verschuuren et al ). At the regional and global levels networks of geographically dispersed sacred natural sites can also serve as key refugia for plant and animal species (Mgumia and Oba , Dudley et al , Bossart and Antwi ), increase water filtration, mitigate soil erosion, and provide an array of other ecosystem services (Daily , Millennium Ecosystem Assessment , Bodin et al , Hernández‐Morcillo et al , LoTemplio et al ). The biodiversity of sacred natural sites has already begun to attract international attention (Wild et al , Verschuuren et al ), and some ecologists now advocate prioritization of sacred natural sites for preservation (Shen et al ).…”

Where is religion in political ecology?

“…Over the past two decades, these literatures have converged to assess sacred forests’ effects on conservation (Narayanan, 1997; Byers et al, 2001; Dudley et al, 2009; Daye and Healy, 2015). Much of this work has examined either how sacred spaces limit the consumption of certain plants and animals or their indirect effects on local ecological stability and long-term forest productivity (Wadley and Colfer, 2004; Campbell, 2005; Salick et al, 2007; Waylen et al 2010; Ormsby and Bhagwat, 2010; Brandt et al, 2013, 2015; LoTemplio et al, 2016; Jana et al, 2017; Rajasri et al, 2017). They can also improve local water quality and protect old growth from timber and other resource extraction (Campbell, 2005; Ormsby and Bhagwat, 2010; Brandt et al, 2013; Woods et al, 2017).…”

Changes in community perspectives on the roles and rules of church forests in northern Ethiopia: evidence from a panel survey of four Ethiopian Orthodox communities

“…In addition to providing spaces for prayer, existence values, and other cultural services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005), sacred natural sites also provide an array of ecosystem services, including water filtration, reducing soil erosion (Bodin et al 2006;Ormsby and Ismail 2015;LoTemplio et al 2016), and serving as repositories of plant and animal biodiversity (Mgumia and Oba 2002;Baker et al 2014). Sacred natural sites may also provide economic benefits in the form of fuel, construction wood, food, fodder or other goods, with access to such benefits subject to resource availability, and subject to local rules and norms surrounding the sacred space (Rutte 2011).…”

“…Surveys of a small sample of 28 church forests by Wassie et al (2010) revealed 168 woody species -including 160 indigenous to Ethiopia. Ongoing research further suggests church forests harbor potentially vast mammalian, bird, and insect biodiversity (Aerts et al 2008;Ermilov et al 2012;Girmay et al 2015) and provide pollination and hydrological services for farmland (Lowman 2011;LoTemplio et al 2016), in addition to serving as seed banks for plants that have otherwise vanished from the region (Aerts et al 2006).…”