The Ethiopian Forest Churches are exactly what the Benedict Option should look like on a conceptual scale: it is not a fleeing from the world but a conserving of the good, true, and beautiful — the ...

In Northern Ethiopia, the natural environment and the spiritual environment are entwined. There are just 1,022 forests that remain in the region known as South Gondar, each of which surrounds an ...

Protection of forests because of their association with religious traditions is a worldwide phenomenon. These sacred forests play a key role in maintaining ecosystem services in regions affected by ...

Human disturbance reduces forest density, biomass, and richness of species in sacred church forests of northern Ethiopia, according to new research. Human disturbance reduces forest density, biomass, ...

Some of the only Afromontane forest in northern Ethiopia today is on lands managed by followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, where for centuries priests and communities have conserved forest ...

If you see a forest in Ethiopia, you know there is very likely to be a church in the middle, says Alemayehu Wassie. Wassie, a forest ecologist, has spent the past decade on a mission: preserving, ...

How Tewahedo Orthodox theology led congregations to become an oasis of forest conservation. In church, Getnet Alemayehu’s father liked to sit beneath a tree, one he had planted himself. In its shade ...

Presenting a workshop on ecosystem services to a roomful of priests in Ethiopia may seem like an unlikely scenario for a conservation biologist to end up in, but for Meg Lowman, it’s an essential part ...

"Conservation International currently estimates that one species is now going extinct every 20 minutes, which is a thousand times faster than the norm during most of the earth's history. It is ...

A newly discovered beetle species, Cactopinus rhettbutleri, was named after mongabay.com’s founder to fund the preservation of Ethiopian forests. Meg Lowman is on a mission to save northern Ethiopia’s ...