Dr. Margaret “CanopyMeg” Lowman’s update from her trip working to save the Church Forests of Ethiopia:

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).

Dr. Margaret “CanopyMeg” Lowman’s update from her trip working to save the Church Forests of Ethiopia:

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)

Some of our great field team in action during the Ethiopia Church Forest expedition:

Erica McAlister, curator of Diptera from the London Museum of Natural History - trapping flies!

Magdalena Sorger, PhD ant researcher from Rob Dunn's lab at North Carolina State University - finding new ants!

Mark Moffett, ant biologist and wildlife photographer -- doing both at the same time!

Our expedition of 13 arrived in Ethiopia, missing one suitcase and one participant — not a bad track record for travel into these remote places. Matt caught up 2 days later, as did Andrew’s luggage. We are now a team, and were joined by Rolex laureate Brukty Tigabu and her new TV show called Young Investigators who climbed and filmed our Zhara church forest work.

On day 1, we headed out to Zhara outside of Bahir Dar. it was an extraordinary feeling to be greeting by many villagers, and to see our TREE-foundation-funded wall encircling this special forest. The gates are in the right places, the locals used their own stone to build the walls and thus “own” it, and the new latrines have actually reduced the populations of dung beetles (or so we think!). I met with the priest who was terribly grateful that their Coptic church will now be steward of nature for generations to come.

This is our first full-completed conservation wall, and even better, they have become meeting places and conversation sites — with lots of kids and adults like sitting and relaxing on the wall itself. Best of all, the cows linger on the OUTSIDE of the forest, grazing on grass instead of on tree seedlings. And another wonderful observation was that the priests designated the perimeter construction to be at least 50 feet from the existing forest boundary, meaning that they have space to restore forest that had been destroyed due to overgrazing and pressures of clearing over the past decades.

One by one, Ethiopia’s forests and their treasure of fresh water, biodiversity, pollinators, soil conservation, spiritual heritage, and shade will be conserved for future generations. Thank you to everyone who has helped with this amazing success — it took a global village for this day to actually happen!

Name me! Starting at a bid of $10,000, TREE is auctioning off the naming rights for this bark beetle! These funds will go directly toward saving the last remaining fragments of forest in Ethiopia, which have an estimated 5-10 years before extinction. Join TREE Foundation in conserving global forests, starting now! Present the unique holiday gift — a forever-legacy of naming an insect after your loved one or company! And there will be more to come, as we uncover new species in the church forests of Ethiopia and elsewhere.

UPDATE 12/28/2011: The naming opportunity for our new species of bark beetle (Cyclorhipidion “Your Name Here”) was “sold” for a five-figure sum to a couple who believe strongly in global forest conversation efforts.

Thanks to them, the remaining forests of Ethiopia will gain new expanses of stone walls to safeguard all the ecosystem services derived from these forests: native seed sources, honey medicines, freshwater springs, shade, soil conservation, biodiversity, spiritual sanctuary for millions of Christian Orthodox or Coptic followers in Ethiopia.

Stay tuned, as TREE Foundation works with entomologists around the world to process our collections, earmark the new species, and “auction” the naming rights in exchange for saving critical habitat.

A big TREE-hug to: Betsy Cole for drawing the beetle, Jiri Hulcr for his classification efforts, and Andrea Lucky for finding it!

Below are comments received in response to Worku Mulat’s blog post “From a remote village to Bill Gates neighborhood“:

Yohannes writes:

First and foremost I admire your keen interest for contributing to such noble idea of preserving the ecosystem in and around our churches. These churches are our ancient cultural heritages and center of our civilization. It is unfortunate however, for these fine cultural treasures, our successive governments are failed to provide its due significance, awareness and protection. As an individual, I am more than happy to fully support what Tree Foundation and Exploration stands for. I also pledge to contribute to the work of such gracious organization and promise to spread the word to the people I know in Diaspora community so they could add their fair share for such grand scheme. What we were looking for was such visionary communes that could organize and help our community by preserving nature and our culture. As for the article that you contributed to Tree Foundation blog by the title “From a remote village to Bill Gates neighborhood” was superb. It is so moving and inspirational story for any Ethiopian. From that small tiny village, where sending kids to school was seen as extravagance for many people, it seems that you just thrived like a few beautiful flowers in the middle of a huge expanse of barren land. Your parents especially your father’s farsightedness was the pillar of all your successes. There are many visionary and brave men born among ordinary people but there are few who could achieve most in their life span and your father is one of those few successful visionary people who could up bring the best set of minds who started their journey from Kersole village Ethiopia and reaches Dallas, Belleview and Redmond.

Those best minds were struggling against all odds to reach the peak of academia achievements to PHD level. It is so incredible exemplary and encouraging success story for many millions of Ethiopian youth generations of the present and future. I say it is motivating, huge milestone and exemplary achievement because such a success story is one in five million even more in the case of Ethiopia. I am proud of you guys.

TREE Research Associate, Worku Mulut, Recalls his Roots

We were a family of twelve, seven boys and three girls and grew up in a village called Kersole, South Wollo, and Ethiopia. The land tenure system during Haile Silassie regime condemned us to be tenants where a fourth of our produce had to go to landlords. It didn’t get better in the regime that replaced the Monarchy system. Plots were small and frost frequently used to kill our crops as the highlands got too cold from October through December. Consequently, we were typical rural family blighted with food insecurity and livelihood scarcity.

Our parents realized that such large family could not be sustained on those small plots and hence decided to send us to school. The initial goal was to be able to write and read. I and my elder brother first, then the next two, and so on until the last child registration was insured. We used to divide our time for education and farming and manage the meager resources frugally.

Parents that never set foot in school have seen all their children graduating in Physics, Computer Science, Ecology, Chemistry and Math at BSc, MSc and PhD level. Our father did not live long to enjoy the success of his family but our mother is still alive and cherish our accomplishment.

We proved poverty is neither in our genes nor in our stars. We stretched our hands and touched the sky. Through the miracle of education, we made poverty history at the household level. So much so that four of us made it from a remote village to Bill Gates neighborhood.

Let the world know we are courageous family eliminating both illiteracy and low standard of living in just less than two decades of our lives. But our mission won’t be complete until the underserved community we left behind is lifted out of poverty.

Nurtured in rural setting under economic hardship, we know what works and what does not. To this end I and my brothers at Microsoft are changing to a higher gear, firing in all cylinders to lift our fellow countrymen out of poverty. In a longer time horizon, we are setting goals to tackle food insecurity, illiteracy, environmental degradation, disease and abject poverty back home. As part of this strategy, we are actively supporting Tree Foundation project to save Orthodox Church forests in Northern Ethiopia.

Worku Mulat, PhD, Tree Foundation Research Associate

Journal Article co-authored by TREE Research Associate, Worku Mulut:

Ecological assessment of Cheffa Wetland in the Borkena Valley, northeast Ethiopia: Macroinvertebrate and bird communities 

Download (PDF, 1014KB)

Go to http://www.churchforest.com to find out how you can help get this film made.

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.

Dr. Neville Winchester, Department of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 3N5
Alameyuhu Wassie Eshete, Forestry Department, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Meg Lowman, PAMS, North Carolina State University, USA

Introduction

Ethiopia is experiencing continual deforestation, and could lose its remaining afro-montane forests within the foreseeable future. In the northern highlands of Ethiopia, remnants of old-aged afro-montane forests can be found associated with Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches (Alemayehu 2010). Rising population pressures and deforestation mainly due to agricultural practices are the primary stressors impacting the rich fauna and flora of the region. Loss of these forests is the greatest threat to the biological diversity of the region and small remnant fragments (e.g., 1-100 ha) of these afro-montane forests exist but will likely lose much of their biodiversity as the surrounding habitat matrix continues to be eroded. We know that in general, species loss is accelerated in small (e.g. <100ha) and isolated fragments (Turner and Corlett 1996). Local extinction related to habitat fragmentation has been well documented (see Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Manaus, Brazil) and compelling evidence suggests that many species of vertebrates cannot persist within small fragments but it is, as yet not clear what proportion of the original arthropod fauna is viable in small and often isolated fragments. Several factors influence arthropods that are likely to survive in a forest fragment. Size and connectivity are important, but frequency and intensity of human disturbance in the surrounding habitat matrix and encroachment are central drivers affecting biodiversity patterns and processes in these Church Forests.

Here, I report on a current biodiversity initiative and highlight preliminary results from a microarthropod program conducted in 2 Church forests. This research program, organized by Dr. Meg Lowman, was predicated on the partnership that she formed in 2009 with the Christian Orthodox clergy… the caretakers of these forests… and Dr. Alemayehu Wassie, a well known Ethiopian ecologist and point contact for this expedition. Information on other components of this pilot project and participants/research from the 2010 expedition can be found here.

Methods

Arthropod communities associated with suspended soils/epiphytes and ground debris in Ethiopian Church Forests were the target groups of interest. In August, 2010, I sampled 2 forest fragments, Debresena and Zhara. Debresna (11o, 51’N;37o,59’E) is a 11.5 hectare fragment containing 34 tree species at an elevation of 2690 metres. Zahar (11o 48’N;37o34’E) is lower (1950 m) in elevation and has less tree species (29). Although both fragments are small, they differ markedly in the degree of human impact within and outside of the forest fragment, Debresna represents a fragment that is significantly more intact with reduced human impacts when compared to Zahara (Figure 1). Additional details pertaining to Church Forests can be found in Alemayehu (2010).

I used single rope techniques to access the canopy and samples were collected with a soil corer, 3cm diameter x 5 cm deep (Figure 2). Contents of each sample core were extracted in the field. Microarthropods were extracted into 75% EtOH using Berlese funnels which were run for 48 hours. Since power was unavailable, samples were extracted using moth balls, a variation on the standard extraction technique but one that is proving to be valuable for areas where a power source is unavailable.

This study incorporates a stratified random sampling design where at each site the forest was divided into 3 strata based on distance to the edge. In each strata 3 trees were randomly chosen and single samples were taken from the ground and from the canopy (approximately 10 m from the ground). In total 18 samples were collected from each site and an additional 2 samples were collected from Zahar.

Extracted microarthropods were sorted into the following taxonomic groups: mites (Acari), springtails (Collembola), beetles (Coleoptera), flies (Diptera), bees, wasps and ants (Hymenoptera), pseudoscorpions (Pseudoscorpiones, millipedes and centipedes (Myriopoda), spiders (Araneae) and snails (Gastropoda) (Figure 4). The Acari were further identified to suborder and adult oribatid mites were identified to species by Dr. Valerie Behan-Pelletier. All specimens are deposited in the Canadian National Collection, Ottawa, Canada.

Independent sample t-tests were used to test for differences in oribatid richness and abundance between sites (canopy and ground samples were pooled). Using F-tests I compared the effect of distance on oribatid species richness at each site. Theoretical total species richness for each site was calculated using first- and second-order Jackknife, ACE, ICE and Chao 1 and 2 estimators. All estimates were performed using EstimateS (Colwell 2005).

Results

From 6472 microarthropods collected from Berlese extractions a total of 51 species representing 30 families were identified from 1043 adult oribatid mites (741 from Debresna, 302 from Zahara). Observed and theoretical species richness using first- and second-order Jackknife, ACE, ICE and Chao 1 and 2 estimates were consistently higher in Debresena compared to Zahar (Table 1).

Twenty-two species of oribatid mites were observed from Zahar, of which 12 species were unique to this site and not found in Debresna. Thirty-six species of oribatid mites were observed from Debresna, of which 19 species were not found in Zahar, and the remaining 20 species of oribatid mites were shared in common between study sites. No significance difference was found between mean species richness (t_{17, 0.05} = 1.25 P = 0.229) and mean species abundance (t_{17, 0.05} = 1.62, P = 0.62) between sites. I detected a significant effect of distance from the edge for species richness at both sites (Zahar, F_3,9,0.05 = 9.12; P = 0.004; Debresna, F_3,8,0.05 = 5.74; P = 0.022) and a Tukey multiple comparison test indicated that the difference in both cases was between the samples from the forest fragment and the samples collected outside of the forest fragment. Distance from edge within the forest fragment showed little association with species composition.

Discussion

Trends found in oribatid mite communities recorded in this study likely act as a surrogate for all microarthropods that require decomposing litter as a habitat template to complete their life histories. I detected no difference in species richness with distance from the edge within each forest site which likely is related to fragment size… these fragments were just too small to observe an effect of distance on diversity. However, distinct differences in species richness were found when samples from each fragment strata were compared to samples taken outside of the forest fragment. In soil systems, increasing mite diversity with increasing soil microhabitat complexity is well known (Anderson 1977). The substrate outside of the forest fragment is completed degraded and consists of compact clay with minimal interstitial spaces and little debris accumulation. Heavy impacts from grazing and general human use are evident and particularly pronounced in Zahar. Habitat heterogeneity and complexity is one explanation for the observations that we recorded in this pilot study, a feature that has conclusively been shown to shape oribatid mite communities (Lindo and Winchester 2006). The ability of forests to provide microhabitats which have a positive association with increased oribatid mite diversity and in general microarthropod diversity has been documented (Lindo and Winchester 2007).

Species richness estimators support the observation that our sampling program, although conservative in nature was sufficient to account for oribatid mite diversity contained in these forest fragments. However, I treat this result with caution and coax it in the context of spatial (fragment size) and temporal (seasonal) constraints. Interestingly, each site had a large number of rare species and species that were site specific. This supports the assertion that forest fragments act as repositories for arthropod biodiversity which is likely linked, among other things, to plant diversity. In addition, I suspect that this trend becomes more pronounced with increasing fragment size. The number of unique forest fragment species suggests that the oribatid mite community associated with these forests is distinctly different from the surrounding disturbed habitat and varies across fragments. I suspect that comparisons of oribatid mite richness between the canopy and ground would be significant but would require an extensive canopy sampling program that includes sampling at heights greater than 10 metres (e.g., 20-45m)… graduate student possibilities!!

In conclusion, well-developed soils still exist in the Church forests of Ethiopia and support a rich, diverse microarthropod community as exemplified by the oribatid mites documented in this study. Forest fragments likely vary in their species composition, further supporting the role that Ethiopia’s forests have in maintaining local biodiversity. Conservation initiatives encompassing all forest fragments are needed to maintain the unique and spectacular diversity that is intimately associated with Ethiopian afro-montane forests.

Literature cited

Alemayehu, W.E., Sterck, F.J. and Bongers, F. 2010. Species and structural diversity of church forests in a fragmented Ethiopian Highland landscape. Journal of Vegetation Science 21 (5), pp. 938 – 948.

Anderson, J.M., 1977. The organization of soil animal communities. Ecology Bulletin 25, pp. 15-23.

Colwell, R.K., 2005. Estimate S: Statistical estimation of species richness and shared species from samples. Version 7.5. Persistent URL <purl.oclc.org/estimates>.

Lindo, Z. and Winchester N.N. 2006. A comparison of microarthropod assemblages with emphasis on oribatid mites in canopy suspended soils and forest floors with ancient western redcedar trees. Pedobiologia 50, pp. 31-41.

Lindo, Z. and Winchester N.N. 2007. Local-regional boundary shifts in oribatid mite (Acari: Oribatida) communities: species-area relationships in arboreal habitat islands of a coastal temperate rain forest, Vancouver Island, Canada. Journal of Biogeography 34, pp. 1611-1621.

Turner, I.M. and Corlett, R.T. 1996. The conservation value of small, isolated fragments of lowland tropical rain forest. Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol. 11 (8), pp. 330-333.

Figure 1. Ethiopian Church forest, Debresna study site. Sample trees and distance from the edge are highlighted and indicate position where Berlese samples were collected.

Figure 2. Neville Winchester, sampling the suspended soils in Zahar.