Forest Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Babile Elephant Sanctuary, Ethiopia

Abstract The study was conducted at Babile Elephant Sanctuary (BES) to identify and document the use and importance of provisioning ecosystem services (ESs). ESs were identified using questionnaire surveys from 110 households in three villages located inside and adjacent to BES by random sampling method. The importance attributed to each ES was evaluated using a descriptive rank analysis. Ordered logistic regressions were used to test whether and how socioeconomic factors influenced the importance attributed to ESs. The most used services were determined based on the percentage of respondents who used a particular service. Fodder, fuelwood, and construction were ranked the most important and used ESs. Age and gender significantly played important roles in people’s perceptions of the importance of ESs. This result suggests that the consequence of human-induced disturbance on woody species diversity and natural forest ESs appeared to be negative depending on the type and intensities of the disturbances.