The Incredible Church Forests of Ethiopia
A special interview with global conservation pioneer Dr Alemayehu Wassie Eschete, known for his work on Ethiopia's Church Forests, carried out at Yale University in April 2024 to coincide with my photographic exhibition Nature's Sanctuaries at the Yale Macmillan Centre.
A constellation of over 35,000 forests patches surround circular Tewahedo Orthodox churches in Amhara province in Northern Ethiopia protected as a tenet of faith. They represent the majority of the mature forests in this vast region where the Blue Nile arises. Over 80% of the Nile's water comes from this region during the rainy season.
Their spiritual and cultural important equals their ecological significance. Through conflict and upheaval over centuries they have endured. Today, they are threatened by expanding agriculture and an almost imperceptible thinning of the canopy. There are simple and scalable solutions possible but they need support.
Alemayehu Wassie Eshete, PhD, Executive Director of ORDA Ethiopia. The Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara (ORDA) protects and restores forests in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, the origin of most of the Nile’s water.
For more information:
https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d415...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/en...
To support the construction of conservation walls:
https://treefoundation.org/projects/c...
