Forest products monetary contribution to households' income: A means to improve the livelihood of a low-income rural community in South Ethiopia.

Forest products and forest-based activities in Ethiopia play a substantial economic contribution to the livelihoods of rural households. Despite its pivotal role, empirical data are inadequate on forests' monetary contribution across a range of ecological locations and social situation, particularly for rural agrarian communities of the developing nations, like Ethiopia. We estimated the economic contributions of forest products and forest-based activities to forest-dependent rural households' income and highlighted key socioeconomic characteristics in Wolaita, Ethiopia. We collected demographic, socioeconomic, and forest use data using a semi-structured questionnaire survey of 384 households, and surveyed markets to determine the prices of forest products for the valuation of forest use in three districts. We used descriptive statistics, the Chi-square test, the two-sample t-test, and one-way ANOVA to analyze the data. Findings showed that all respondents were engaged in one way or another in forest-based activities, while 84.6 % were involved in farming. The annual average income from forest products was 252.7US per household, contributing to 28.1 % of the total yearly average income (989.4US$), and 38.3 % relative forest income (RFI). Annual mean household income from crops was 648.1US$. Average annual household income from grazing, charcoal, firewood, woodcutting, cut-and-carry, NTFP, seed selling, medicinal plants, and seedling selling was 77.3 %, 58.4 %, 50.2 %, 24.1 %, 18.5 %, 12.7 %, 7.1 %, 6.8 % and 5.4 % of the total annual mean income, respectively revealing a significant difference (p < 0.05). Family size, farmland size, distance to the forest, and occupation were the determinants of the contribution of forest products to household income. In general, poor households derive the highest relative forest income implying high dependence of the poorer on forest resources in the study area. The findings provide useful information for developing sustainable forest management policies and strategies to enhance the economic and ecological benefits of forests, and highlight the need for funding projects to pay attention to the specific household variables that affect forest use. Mainstreaming conservation activities in development sectors and integrating development and conservation projects may improve the livelihood of the low-income family in the region.

Ethnobotany of traditional medicinal plants and associated indigenous knowledge in Dawuro Zone of Southwestern Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: The study aimed at documenting the indigenous and local knowledge and use of traditional medicinal plants for treating human and livestock ailments in Dawuro Zone of Ethiopia. METHODS: A survey was conducted among traditional healers and native administrators through discussion, interviews, and field observations. The snowball sampling technique was used to select 384 traditional healers in purposefully selected 50 villages spanning seven districts for face-to-face individual interviews. The chi-square test was applied to establish associations between traditional healers' demographics, the distance between the village site and the nearest natural forest and a health center, and SPSS V.20 software was used for the analysis. RESULTS: The traditional healers of the study area reported the use of 274 traditional medicinal plant species belonging to 217 genera and 82 families. Asteraceae (11.68%), Fabaceae (9.49%), and Lamiaceae (9.12%) were the foremost frequently used families. Herb species (54.8%) and leaves (65%) were predominantly sourced from the wild environment. The quantity of medicinal plants used (x2 = 278.368, df = 20, P = 0.000) and years of (experience in) traditional healing using herbs (x2 = 76.358, df = 10, P = 0.000) varied with distance from the natural forests. The service charge for healing had strong positive association (x2 = 24.349, df = 5, P = 0.000) with healer's age (x2 = 309.119, df = 184, P = 0.000) and educational level (x2 = 851.230, df = 598, P = 0.000) with distance of traditional healer's residence from the medical institution. The agricultural activities, urbanization, low or no charge for the healing service, the secrecy and oral transfer of the knowledge, and the demand for medicinal and other multiple purposes species were some of the factors threatening the resource and the associated knowledge as well as the service in the study area. CONCLUSION: There are diversified traditional medicinal plants applied for healthcare of the community and domestic animals of the study area. The source of remedies mostly depends on herbs of natural forests, and the leaf was the most frequently used plant part. Developing conservation intervention and sustainable systems of utilization is needed for multipurpose medicinal plants. Finally, integrating with modern system and formalizing, legalizing, and capacitating the traditional medicine practitioners are needed for access of primary healthcare systems to rural communities.

An evaluation of repellency and feeding inhibition of ethno-medicinal plants against major malaria vectors in southern Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Plant-based mosquito control methods may use as a supplementary malaria vector control strategy. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of smoking ethno-medicinal plants on indoor density and feeding activity of malaria vectors at early hours of the night and its residual effect after midnight in southern Ethiopia. METHODS: Both field and tent trials were conducted to evaluate the impact of smoking Juniperus procera leaves, Eucalyptus globulus seeds and Olea europaea leaves in Kolla Shara Village from July 2016 to February 2017. For the field trial, five grass-thatched traditional huts (three for ethno-medicinal plants and two as control [only charcoal smoking and non-charcoal smoking]) were used. Indoor host-seeking mosquitoes were collected by CDC light traps. A Latin square design was employed to minimize the bias due to the variation in house location and different sampling nights. For the tent experiment, 25 3-5-day-old starved wild female Anopheles mosquitoes reared from the larvae were released into the tents where a calf was tethered at the mid-point of each tent. RESULTS: A total of 614 Anopheles mosquitoes belonging to 5 species were collected from 5 huts, of which 93.4% was An. arabiensis; O. europaea, E. globulus and J. procera reduced the indoor density of An. arabiensis, with the mean percentage drop of 80%, 73% and 70%, respectively. In the tent trial, smoking of these plants had significant knockdown effects and inhibited feeding on the calves (F = 383.5, DF = 3, P < 0.01). The mean knockdown effect due to O. europaea was relatively high (17.7 ± 0.54; 95% CI 16.8-18.6), while it was only 0.9 ± 0.1 (95% CI 0.29-1.52) in the control tents. All the test plants used in the tent trial caused significantly inhibited feeding activity of An. arabiensis on the host (F = 383.5, DF = 3, P < 0.01). About 94.5%, 89.5% and 86% of mosquitoes were unfed because of the smoking effect of O. europaea, E. globulus and J. procera, respectively, whereas only 19.5% were unfed in the control tent. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking ethno-medicinal plant materials reduced indoor density of malaria vectors and inhibited feeding on calves inside the tents. Thus, plant-based mosquito control methods may play a vital role in reducing mosquito bites in the early hours of the night and thereby reduce residual malaria transmission.