Assessing Households’ Fuel Wood Tree Species Preference, The Case of Desa’a Afro Alpine Forest, Tigray

Abstract

Desa’a forest is a remnant forest of northern Ethiopia, Tigray, which is currently heavily exploited for fuel wood and charcoal processing. Although the forest is gazeted to be protected area, it is not immune from illegal cutting and grazing, resulting reduction of forest cover and biodiversity loss. Hence, the study was intended to assess the species type and parts of the species mostly preferred by fuel wood collectors from the forest area. Purposive stratified random sampling technique was employed to select respondents for interviewing and questionnaire distribution. Field observations and discussion with key informants were also employed to validate the data generated.  As the result revealed,  woody vegetation species like O. europaea, J. procera and A. etibyca were the most extracted species from the forest with 62.34 % (22.85 tone/day), 13.95 % (5.11 tone/day) and 10.12 % (3.71 tone/day) coverage, respectively. More than 93% of fuel wood extraction from the forest area was only stem/ split wood part leading to whole cutting of the tree species. Hence, the species degradation on the forest area was expected to be more intensive on O. europaea, J. procera and A. etibyca than other species which invite purposive intervention by concerned body.

Keywords: Desa’a , remnant forest , fuel wood