Indigenous Knowledge and Factors Related to Practices of Forest Conservation Among Forest Dependent Communities in the Tocha District Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess and explain indigenous knowledge and factors related to practice of forest conservation among forest dependent community in the three kebeles in Dawuro Zone, Tocha District. The communities involved were Malla and Manja. In light of this, both primary data and secondary data were used. Primary data was obtained through structured questionnaire, key informant information and focus group discussion while secondary data was obtained from published and unpublished materials, books, journals and project reports. A total of 162 sample respondents were identified using simple random sampling technique. According to the binary logit analysis age, religion, extension service and education were one of socio-economic factors found to be significantly related to the practice of forest conservation while sex, marital status, family size, ethnicity, occupation and residence to forest were not significantly related. The communities’ awareness about the general function of the forest was identified as indirect benefits like having high tendency to bring rain, maintaining soil fertility, protecting from extreme sun light and protecting the soil from erosion and direct benefits like getting non timber forest products (NTFP) and timber and other forest associated products are the well known contribution of forest. Even though, these two well contribution forests are known the communities understanding on indirect benefit is higher than direct benefits of forest. The forest communities are more associated with the forest and they have different conservation methods in their area due to their indigenous knowledge. This indigenous knowledge of community related towards the practice of conservation was for the purpose of traditional belief, medicinal value, for the extraction of honey and coffee shade and others. Though forest is conserved and protected by the communities, forest being deforested and reduced in coverage. Hence, forests were being depleted intentionally or unintentionally in the study area. This is due to expansion of agricultural land, population growth, logging of timber, high demand of charcoal, fuel wood and so on. Because of these pressures there is high level of deforestation in the area. Generally, for the protection and utilization of forest in sustainable manner it is recommended that traditional ecological culture should be done wisely.