ABSTRACT
Ethiopia is endowed with biodiversity due to variation in its altitude and climate. There are about 6,500 to 7,000 species of flowering plants, conifers and ferns in Ethiopia, of which 12 per cent are endemic (Tedla and Gebre 1998). The country serves as a source of genetic resources of different species of crops such as coffee. Coffee is the most important agricultural commodity in Ethiopia, both economically and socially. It is one of the most important export crops. The country ranks ninth in coffee exports which generate over 60 per cent of the country’s foreign earning (EEA 2000: 257). Despite its importance, the wild population of Coffea arabica is increasingly endangered as a result of deforestation, production of alternative crops, and settlement of immigrants. High population pressure and continuing declining in soil fertility in farm areas have been the major reasons for this ecosystem degradation. To the local community, forest land serves as their main means of livelihood in order to meet their subsistence requirement while it also has a risk buffering role (Ejigie 2005: 89) in that provides the means for smoothing income fluctuations. This creates a commonly observed conflict between the efforts for biodiversity conservation on the one hand and the need of forest land conversion and exploitation on the other. This conflict unavoidably puts biological diversity in danger of extinction.
