From a bird's eye view, most of northern Ethiopia looks like one big brown field, only occasionally crossed by roads. But there are tiny patches of green forest on it, thanks to the temples that belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of Tevahido, with about 50 million members.
More than 3, 500 of these churches are scattered throughout the Ethiopian countryside, and many are located in forests. Church followers believe that forests are just as sacred as religious buildings resting in their shade.
Catastrophic rate of deforestation
But this picture contrasts sharply with most of the nature of the rest of the country. At the beginning of the twentieth century, forests occupied about 40 percent of Ethiopia. Currently, mainly due to increasing production rates and high demand for agricultural land to feed the twelfth largest population in the world, the country's landscape is covered by forests only 4 percent!
When you look at this picture, the heart contracts, so lonely and defenseless small pieces of forests seem in front of the desert surrounding them. This is especially clear from a bird's eye view.
It is the churches that protect most of these forests. Some of these buildings are 1500 years old, which means that the sites around them are also ancient. They are vital islands of biodiversity in a region that suffers from deforestation and overgrazing. They help maintain water balance and soil, and also provide a habitat for pollinators, which are important not only for forests, but also for related crops. These are real Noah's arks for those representatives of the fauna that previously inhabited almost the entire territory of the country.
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The destructive role of human activity
A study presented in March 2019 in PLoS One (USA), an international multidisciplinary scientific journal that publishes works in the field of natural and medical sciences, clearly demonstrated the catastrophic consequences of human activity using the example of these remaining oases. Many human feet and animal hooves trample vegetation, reduce the size and density of forests and enhance the isolation of these already fragile ecosystems.
Some churches built low stone walls so cattle and other animals could not walk through the undergrowth and trample it. There is a ban on grazing and walking in these areas, but not all adhere to it. This land is considered sacred, and it is possible to hold prayer meetings, burials on it, but just not walking here is not allowed.
