Walia Special Edition on the Bale Mountains (2011) - Zoologische ...

unallowable threat to the protected area (Terborgh and Peres 2002). And there are those who see the
issue as a management reality and, potentially, an opportunity (Borrini – Feyeraben 1999; Schmidt-
Soltau and Brockington 2007; Schwartzman et al. 2000).
In reality, many protected areas have people living within their boundaries and many more
have large adjacent local populations just outside their limits, who use the resources of the protected
area. This is certainly the case in Ethiopia. It is widely acknowledged that about 70% of National
Parks in the tropics have people living within them (van Schaik, et al. 2002). Today, there is a growing
consensus that in order to successfully meet conservation objectives, in the majority of cases those
objectives need to be addressed alongside, and in consideration of, objectives of sustainable human
development.
This paper discusses the need to change views concerning people using and living in National
Parks in Ethiopia, using the Bale Mountains National Park as an example. The Bale Mountains
National Park is potentially a useful case study in Ethiopia to start proactively managing the People
in Parks and seasonal resource use issues.
Threat or Opportunity – People in Parks
In the Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP), populations of Oromo pastoralists have lived in the
designated National Park area1 for many years. Their early settlement and resource use areas predate
National Park designation in 1969. Such settlement areas include well established clustered
villages such as Hawo, Gora, Darkina and Rira. Today these villages are already instituted with the
lowest government administrative structure, known as the Kebele, and social infrastructure such as
schools, clinics, etc.
Today, 40 years after the Bale Mountains National Park was designated, an even greater
number of people live inside the proposed Park area. A settlement survey conducted by BMNP in
2006/7 estimated that more than 3000 households, with an average of 7 persons per household, now
live permanently inside the Park boundaries (FZS unpublished data, see figure 1). This amounts to
more than 21,000 people. With this increase in population has come a rapid land use and livelihood
change. In the Bale area the traditional livelihood system was based around the main activities of
livestock herding and beekeeping. In the present day, rural livelihoods primarily focus upon crop
cultivation, with livestock and natural products as secondary. Other Park resource use includes
bamboo harvesting, honey collection, wild forest coffee harvesting, medicinal plant collection,
wood and timber use, and even crop agriculture. The Park area also has an increasing number of
seasonal resource users.
The number of people adjacent to the Park has also increased, which in turn creates more
pressure on the natural resources within the Park. For example the Harenna forest and increasingly
the Afroalpine Sanetti plateau are historically widely used for seasonal grazing. Traditionally the
Harenna forest was used for grazing during the three month dry season (January –March) by lowland
1 The Bale Mountains National Park has never been legally gazetted.
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