Abstract:
Woodland provide a wide range of benefits to rural people, ranging from being as a source of
new agricultural land, non-timber forest products, timbers and provide a range of on-site
ecological services. The world’s population today is expanding by 92 million people each year.
Rural people pose threats to the forest in general and to some species in particular for the means
of generating subsistence and income. It has long been argued that, the forest income in general
is relatively more important for the low income households and as a corollary that overuse and
degradation will hurt them more. The Gambella lowland woodland has more than 106 woody
plant species documented. The major objective was to determine the economic values of Lare
district woodland’s uses and non-uses value from the local households’ heads perspectives. The
study was done in Gambella National Regional States of Ethiopia in Southwestern part of the
country. Six kebeles were selected purposely from Lare wereda as research target population. In
selection of the representative sample size, simple random sampling tecnique was designed and
applied. Quantitative data were collected from 200 households’ heads of those six kebeles using
structured questionnaire. All respondents were farmers and livestock husbandry. Willingness to
pay data was collected using bidding game model. Quantitative data were collected and
analyzed using both descriptive and econometric model with the help of SPSS version 17
software. Timber product (e.g log product) was seen more significant to local people livelihood
support in which about 86% of respondents were observed from the range of 100-301+ numbers
of timber per household per year. Moreove; local community in the study area were more
interested in conservation of soil and water inwhich about 67% of them pay their maximum WTP
at equal or above the bid (30-60) ETB per household per year. For management of fish
resources (e.g. Catfish), the sample households’ heads who are willing to contribute their
maximum WTP below bid were 73.5%. The reason for concentration of many respondents in
paying their maximum MaxWTP below starting bid level for management of catfish resource is
due to not using it frequently for their daily consumption since it is seasonal use which they are
not usually used it. A Tobit model was employed to identify the effect of explanatory variable in
WTP of households’ heads for management of total woodland resources. For Tobit Model result;
total income, and family size were found significant at p<0.001 in WTP for management of total
woodland. Hence; the result indicates that community in the study area is lacking of a good
knowledge about the importance of some uses and non-uses values of woodland. Therefore;
government and non-government involvement is needed in provision of training from the
different aspect of natural resources management and policies.
