ABSTRACT
Juniperus procera Hochst. Ex Endl. forests once covered some 200,000 hectares in the highlands of Ethiopia (Teketay and Bekele, 2002). These forests formed the largest juniper forests on the African continent (Kelecha, 1979). In 1955, juniper forests constituted 3 per cent of the total forest area of Ethiopia (Jansen, 1981; FAO, 1986). Juniper forests are nowadays very much reduced in area, fragmented or very much degraded (Javeed et al, 1980; Hall, 1984; FAO, 1986; Borghesio et al, 2004), due to a combination of intensive deforestation, timber harvests and grazing inhibiting successful regeneration (Teketay and Bekele, 2002; Burgess et al, 2004; Couralet et al, 2005). In this study we compare juniper populations in remaining semi-natural forests, secondary forests and church forests. We use this comparison for sketching the key problems to restore and maintain Juniperus populations in these different forest types and consider possible consequences of climate change such as increasing temperature (Bonnefille and Umer, 1994) and increasing frequency of drought events (Verschuren et al, 2000).
