Along with some great moments, came some bad.

Here are some of the “worst” things about our Ethiopia expedition:

1. Car trouble
2. Hornbill-hitting-windscreen (will send from laptop)
3. Eating ONLY with the right hand (because the left is used for something else)
4. Watching where you step….. the church forest ground abounds with dung-beetle habitat
5. Eucalpyt plantings that ultimately suck down the water table, and displace native trees
6. Student housing for clergy disciples

As I muse about our last 3 weeks in Ethiopia, and count my blessings for toasted cheese sandwiches, sidewalks, books, and cotton sheets on my bed in America, I think about the incredible experiences of working in Ethiopia.

The best moments:

1. Our amazing team of scientists and citizens
2. the church leadership, with their vision to conserve their forests
3. the kids of Ethiopia, who shared our love for the small creatures of our planet
4. The sobering lessons learned from watching women and families in Ethiopia, and how important it is to empower moms and children in emerging countries

Tune in to WEDU public television tonight (Thursday, August 26) at 8 p.m. as research by New College students and faculty on invasive pythons in Florida is featured on Gulf Coast Journal with Jack Perkins.

This past year, students from biology professor Meg Lowman’s ecology and conservation biology classes, as well as bioinformatics and computational science professors Christopher Hart and Leon Kaganovskiy’s classes, conducted research on the threat and pervasiveness of invasive pythons in our state. Interviews with the student and faculty researchers along with footage shot and produced by them will be aired on Thursday’s program. Please tune in.

Dr. Lowman is featured in this article in La Vanguardia (Catalonia’s leading daily newspaper).

“El Techo de los bosques es el octavo continente”

• PDF of the original article
• Spanish text of the article
• Text of article translated to English using Google Translate

We are heading home from our expedition, with many participants holding official permits that allow them to identify materials with experts before returning to Ethiopia where they so badly need the local information. It was an amazing expedition — I have many photos, stories, data sheets, lots of bites, and many humble thoughts about the inequities of our planet.

Stay tuned, as we put our video feeds onto the blog in the next few days — the very antiquated computer systems in Ethiopia could not handle the files. All of our participants are true heroes of the planet, and to them, I can never say THANK YOU enough — they gave their time, expertise, sweat and toil, funds, and follow-up. The church forests of Ethiopia have never had such a magnitude of talent and passion infused into their greenery. And the hard work is yet to come — identifying insects, tabulating data, interpreting photos, and sharing the word with others who may help us save these precious last forest patches for the heritage of Ethiopia and also the planet.

My list of heroes:

• Dr. Alemayehu Wassie — my collaborator, expert on Ethiopian church forest trees, and adept juggler of church and science
• Susan Jarzen – expert leaf analyzer, logistics coordinator for the trip
• Dr. David Jarzen – paleo-botanist, volunteer in all capacities, and niow an expert in teaching kids how to use sweep nets!
• Dr. Cat Cardelius – soil and epiphyte expert, climber extraordinaire
• Dr. Neville Winchester – micro-arthropod expert, and creative field biologist who managed to put up his extraction traps in all sorts of rough conditions
• Phil Harpootlian – beetle expert and especially good for our extensive dung beetle collection
• Janet Ciegler – another Coleoptera expert, and also carried our Explorers Club Expedition flag
• Dr. Hal Heatwole – ant man, who traipsed all forests with his simple-but-effective sardine bait traps
• Robert Kluttz – freshmen at University of North Carolina- Wilmington and future conservation biologist (we all hope!)
• Bob Kluttz – birdman of Ethiopia, and supporter of all aspects of the expedition
• Jessica Chan – teacher and liaison with the children, in our quest to educate the village kids about conserving their local church forests
• Dr. Phil Wittman – another climber extraordinaire, also rigger of trees, photographer, and fix-it skills for all field challenges
• Dr. Claire Ozanne – Our British entomologist, specializing in Diptera (flies) and also canopy/understory insect fauna.

Additional thanks to our team players who worked from home:

• Wendy Nalvern, the world’s most amazing travel agent who got all of us out of multiple pickles along the way
• David Martin, webmaster
• Staff at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences who are holding down the fort!

Here are a few of the critters we were surveying — got 135 birds, but all but about 11 were outside the church forests.

We got over 3000 insects as mentioned earlier, with a large portion Diptera and also Coleoptera. Of note many of the Coleoptera tend to be dung beetles (exact counts to follow) which may indicate the lack of modern hygiene within the church forests for ablutions. We are advocating for a toilet block at Zhara, since 120 live within this gorgeous green site, but there are no established toilet blocks. This patterns may shift the biodiversity of the insect fauna, as well as have other marked impacts on human health. We plan to return in the dry season to more carefully student the herbivores in the canopy, during flowering seasons.

We are in our final phases of the Ethiopia expedition, with over 3000 insects logged by various field methods, over 1000-person hours of field time, and several thousand hours of field work yet to process back in our labs and libraries at home institutions. The project was overwhelming and inspirational. We are humbled by the children’s enthusiasm for learning their natural history, and awestruck by the general lack of any knowledge about the local natural history. But we are heartened by the fact that local clergy have initiated a stone fence around the Zhara church forest, and hope to figure out creative solutions for funding labor, stone transport, and gates in the near future — for many church forests, not just for one.

On our last day, we drove to Lalibela to view the most unique church of all Ethiopia. Forged from one massive rock formation, Lalibela defeats all conceivable means of both architectural and construction technologies. How did Ethiopians in the 1200s carve hard rock into 13 churches? And how did they cart tools and food and shelter up an amazing mountain to execute this project? And what were the tools of the trade? And how do you design down from the soil surface into bedrock, and design amazing cathedral structures? It was overwhelming.

Church of Saint George, Lalibela facts (Source: Wikipedia):

• Built in the early thirteenth century
• Most well known and last built of the eleven churches in the Lalibela area
• Has been referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”
• The dimensions of the complex are 25 meters by 25 meters by 30 meters

Dr. Catherine Cardelús writes about the epiphytes they have found in the church forests of Ethiopia so far:

I am thrilled that we have epiphytes! Thus far I have found 5 species of epiphytic ferns at the low elevation site, Zhara, and 4 species of epiphytic ferns at the higher elevation, Debresena. One species overlaps between the two sites. I haven’t found any flowering plants in the canopy. There are also a few species of moss. The lower elevation site also had more canopy soil (yes, trees can accumulate soil) than the higher elevation site.

I have collected forest floor soils, canopy soils, epiphytes and host tree foliar tissue from each site. From these samples I will analyze the nutrient concentrations. We chose the same tree species within each site and examine trees along the edge of the forest and in the interior to examine if there are noticeable edge effects in species composition and foliar nutrients.

Some various photos from our activities in the field here in Ethiopia:

We awoke to a heavy downpour so have postponed our morning checking for insects to this afternoon. Meantime, the holy mass takes place a noon, so we will not be able to access the Church forest until the mass is over. Our projected field time is 2 pm — most of the people walk many miles to church and must walk home many miles on the same dirt road that our vehicles will cover.

Yesterday, after another big rainstorm, one of our 3 four-wheel drives got stuck on a very steep and slick slope, so scary that most of us got out and walked up the hill along with the villagers. Even worse, the drivers took our vehicles into the bottom of another steep valley in the afternoon, and again it was a fairly hairy ride back up to the main dirt road. Roads are mainly for walking around here, and the sight of a motorized vehicle invites all the children to wave and shout. It is slightly embarrassing to have such marked economic differences between the locals and the visitors. Even the Oxfam and Care and UN workers that we see and meet in the field all stay in the nicer hotels and usually have the only other cars that we see. The world is continually creating a large chasm between the haves and the have-nots. At the least, we need to help the Ethiopians hang on to their natural capital (their biodiversity and natural resources) for their future economy and quality of life.