Impact of Participatory Forest Management on Forest Condition in Chora Woreda Buno Bedele Zone, Southwest Ethiopia

The main objective of this study was to investigate the impacts of PFM on forest condition in Chora Woreda Buno Bedele zone, Southwest Ethiopia. Woody species and vegetation data were collected from different PFM forest blocks and adjacent Non-PFM forest blocks. A total of 48 plots measuring 20 m × 20 m were employed to collect species composition and structural data. Data for all the sapling and seedlings were also collected within subplots of 4 m X 4 m and 2 m X 2 m respectively. Accordingly, a total of 58 different woody plant species (56 at PFM and 47 at Non-PFM forests), representing 35 families were recorded, with 45 species shared. Woody species diversity and evenness were higher in the forest with PFM (H´ = 3.45, E = 0.88) compared to the forest without PFM (H´ = 2.89, E =0 .75). The overall average values of sapling and seedling density were also significantly (p <0 .05) higher in PFM than Non-PFM forests, however, no significant variations were observed in basal area and dominance of the species between the two forests. Main challenges to PFM implementation were low productivity of land and income of communities, poorly defined net benefit sharing arrangements, limited Budget for follow up and awareness of PFM communities, low level of knowledge and information use level of use of existing technology and knowledge in informing the process, suboptimal community participation, persistent tenure insecurity, lack of well-defined and agreed upon net benefit sharing arrangements and poor productivity of forests under PFM. The community, therefore, required training and scale up their awareness on development, value addition and marketing of Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFP) among others. Thus, it can be concluded that participatory forest management is showing signs of delivering impact in terms of woody species diversity conservation in the study area. However, there is a gap in some of forest user groups in terms of forest protection from illegal activities. Therefore, it is important to conduct further assessments in the remaining forest user group’s to have baseline data for further study and performance evaluation over all forests under PFM approaches.