TREE Foundation has generated countrywide inspiration by priests to conserve their church forests. Our team presented information in ecosystem services at this meeting of 700+ religious leaders in Ethiopia. A WIN for the trees!
My friend, Katherine Holden, is preparing for a global tree-climbing tour to draw attention to the plight of endangered forests around the globe. We will follow her from Brazil to India, as she takes on the canopy! Hooray for Katherine!
A critical element of our “conservation of Ethiopian church forests” project, Alemayehu and I hosted a worksohp for priests. TREE Foundation “funded” the per diem for each priest to attend. For 2 days of travel to the workshop, one day in attendance, 2 days returning, and all their lodging/meals, Alemayehu calculated that we would give each priest the birre equivalent of $10 US (amazing difference in costs of living!!!)
The goals were twofold: 1. to educate them about the ecosystem services that their forests provide for surrounding communities; and 2. to share our solutions, which included information about the stone walls, the latrines, and also the notion of forest restoration (once the fences are completed). The priests came from the northeast (or Gondor District) of the Coptic or Christian Orthodox Church, some walking for 2 days to reach their church headquarters in Debre Tabor. We had 81 priests, and the event was a huge success. The Arch-Bishop blessed our project, and at the end of the day, pledged that his church and their disciples will prioritize conservation of these green emeralds that dot the landscape. The partnership of science and religion is proving to be a powerful conservation tool.
Some photos from the workshop (photos by Jan Ceigler):
Our biodiversity team just attended a workshop of the Coptic (Christian Orthodox) priest leadership in Debra Tabor, Ethiopia — chaired by my local colleague, Dr. Alemayehu Wassie Eshete, and myself. I presented a visual lecture (with a very challenging electricity situation where we actually taped the wires together — my laptop may never survive this experience!). The priests TOTALLY get the ecological issues at stake — if their forests shrink beyond recovery, they will suffer amazing problems including lack of fresh water, no pollinators, absence (and extinction) of biodiversity, flooding and other episodes, and essentially a lack of the spiritual links between religion and trees (which they view as essential).
Here are some images of our partnership between religion and science. the outcomes include building stone walls around critical church forests (donations on this website!), hosting workshops to educate the religious community about the ecosystem services that church forests provide, and linking to some international organizations that can fund these walls in a timely fashion (Gates Foundation? UN? USAID? etc).
workshop with Coptic priest leadership in Northeast Ethiopia, to discuss conserving the last remaining forests which are located in the church yards (called "church forests")
workshop attendees, including the Arch-bishop of the Gondor district and also some of our team of biodiversity scientists (front row, kneeling).
Monday, January 8 – Today we started sampling at our largest church forest site — Gelawdios — which is 100 hectares in size and dates back to 1500. We met with the head priest of this district, who cares passionately about conserving their church forests. He also is concerned about the increase of eucalypt planting; although everyone needs firewood, he sees the native tree species declining and the water table shrinking. He is a perceptive church leader! We conducted biodiversity surveys at the edge and also the interior of this site. Flies RULE! Our Diptera expert, Erica McAlister from the London Museum of Natural History, is in heaven. We also had a generous smattering of Coleoptera for our beetle team, including a tree totally consumed by an outbreak.
Meeting with the Priest (including a video session for our film crew, translated by Alemayehu Wassie Eshete)
The Priest visited our field sampling sites in the forest
My photo (from the canopy) of our intrepid team, back on the ground (including Priest with his umbrella)
A portion of all money raised for this film will be used for stone walls around the forests, local labor, hygiene installations to insure that the church biodiversity has appropriate stewardship, gates, and a truly sustainable approach.
DESCRIPTION:
The Ethiopia of ancient times was verdant, flourishing country, frequented by the Egyptians and Romans for its natural resources and for the knowledge of its inhabitants. Ethiopia was also one of the earliest countries to adopt Christianity as its national religion, and in 500 AD Coptic churches sprouted up among the woodland.
Modern-day Ethiopia has been largely deforested for agricultural needs and to harvest building materials. When looking at Ethiopia from an aerial vantage point, however, one can make out thousands of tiny, wooded sanctuaries amidst the sprawling, arid farmlands – vestiges of the ancient Ethiopian forest. In the center of each one of these green oases lies a church.
These Ethiopian Othodox Christian churches take it as one of their fundamental tenets to preserve these ‘church forests,’ and the parishioners consider them to be reconstructions of the Garden of Eden. Some of these churches, and likewise the sacred forests that surround them, are 1500 years old. These sites are of enormous cultural and historical significance and also play a key role in the ecology of Ethiopia – as food sources, water cycling sources, seed banks, and sole habitats for the majority of the entire region’s biodiversity. However, these church forests are rapidly disappearing, with some estimates predicting that they will vanish entirely within 5 years.
Enter Meg Lowman, affectionately called the mother of canopy research as one of the first scientists to explore this “eighth continent.” For 30 years, she has designed hot-air balloons and walkways for treetop exploration to solve the mysteries of the world’s forests. She has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and her first book, “Life in the Treetops,” received a cover review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.
This January, Meg will lead a team of researchers and conservationists to Ethiopia on a mission to work hand in hand with the local priests and parishioners to create and enact simple sustainable measures to forever preserve these sacred cultural and environmental havens. We will document the places, the people who live there, and the visitors who have come to help. This film will raise awareness about the church forests, the plight they are in, as well as highlight an unlikely story of collaboration between scientific and religious communities.
DC Randle explores the Amazon Rainforest canopy and talks about what made him want to become a biologist, what he tells his students and what he likes best about the rainforest canopy.
