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PROSPECTS for TROPICAL FOREST BIODIVERSITY in the LANDSCAPES of SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA Conservation in a Context of Land Use Change and Human Population Growth

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PROSPECTS for TROPICAL FOREST BIODIVERSITY in the LANDSCAPES of SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA Conservation in a Context of Land Use Change and Human Population Growth PROSPECTS FOR TROPICAL FOREST BIODIVERSITY IN THE LANDSCAPES OF SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA conservation in a context of land use change and human population growth Doctoral thesis by Patrícia Rodrigues Prospects for tropical forest biodiversity in the landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia conservation in a context of land use change and human population growth Academic dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Sustainability of Leuphana University for the award of the degree “Doctor of Natural Sciences” -Dr. rer. nat.- Submitted by Patrícia Alexandra Santos Rodrigues Born on 30.09.1983 in Lisboa (Portugal) Submitted on: 07.07.2020 First supervisor and reviewer: Prof. Dr. Joern Fischer Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Jacqueline Loos Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Tobias Kuemmerle Copyright notice Chapters II-VII have either been published, or are submitted for publication in international scientific journals. Copyright of the text and the illustrations is with the author or the authors of the respective chapter. The publishers own the exclusive right to publish or to use the text and illustrations for their purposes. Reprint of any part of this dissertation requires permission of the copyright holders. Photos on Chapter II were taken by Girma Shumi, and Plate 1d on Chapter V by Matthias DeBeenhouwer. The remaining photos were taken by Patrícia Rodrigues. © Patrícia Rodrigues (Chapter I, V, VI & VII) © John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Chapter IV) © Elsevier (Chapter II and IIIa) © Sage (Chapter IIIb) Author΄s address: Leuphana University, Faculty of Sustainability Science Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lueneburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Para a Carolina Anda cookie, anda com a mommy. Vamos conhecer a floresta. É preciosa. Para a avó Alda Acknowledgements As a PhD student, I heard and read more than once, that the PhD journey was made of a long, bumpy and lonely road. In hindsight, I think that there is some truth in that analogy. My journey was long; it lasted five years and was made on a road with some bumps, just like the ones we find on the roads of Ethiopia. These included camera-traps stuck for ages in airport costums, an emergency state in Ethiopia, a maternity leave, sleep deprivation, moving countries with my family, Brexit anxiety and, yes, a pandemic. However, despite long and bumpy at times, my journey was never, ever, lonely. I had the privilege and the comfort of being surrounded, supported and guided by truly amazing people, and I am certain that words will fall short to give a fair acknowledgement to everyone I met along the way. Joern Fischer, my supervisor, gave me the opportunity of joining the SESyP project and of making a PhD on a much-desired topic in a much-loved region. Thank you Joern! Thank you for your excellent scientific guidance and mentoring and for all of the support, reassurance and motivation when life was just being life. I wish every PhD student would have a mentor like you. Academia would benefit so much from that. Oh, and thank you for your jokes. The book will be out soon. Working in the office and doing fieldwork in Ethiopia was a truly pleasure, thanks to all of my colleagues and friends in the SESyP project: Ine Dorresteijn, Aisa Manlosa, Jannik Schultner, Jan Hanspach, Girma Shumi, Tolera Jiren, Neil Collier and Joern Fischer. I cannot thank Jannik and Jan enough for all their help with German in all the “alle wichtigen Verwaltungsformen mit langen Worten”, or in other words, admin. Aisa, Girma and Tole: Bob could not have nicer people as PhD colleagues, and I really enjoyed sharing this journey with you three! A warm recognition is mandatory to Ine, Jan and Jannik who unofficially co-supervised this dissertation. Thank you also Ine and Jannik for proofreading Chapter I on such a short notice. It has been huge privilege to be part of such a caring, funny and inspiring bundle of people. Thank you for all the nonsense moments and for all the laughter. Those were vital for the completion of this thesis. Writing about nonsense, Dave Abson should follow. Many thanks also to Julia Leventon, Maraja Riechers, Tamara Schaal, Cristina Apetrei, Katie Klaniecki, Ioana Duse and Lotte Lutz for the many encouraging words I heard along the way. Thanks to all the PhD fellows on the Leverage Points project! The six months of fieldwork would have been impossible without the guidance and resilience of many field assistants that walked with me in the beautiful and sometimes nearly inaccessible forests of Ethiopia, during the day but also during the night. Galatoomi Tadjo in Guido Bere, Zakeeri and Mifta in Kele Harari, Sulti and Elias in Boricho Deka, Nabso in Difo Mani and Tahir in Kuda Kefo. A warm thank you to Fikadu, for driving both of us in safety in the roads of Ethiopia, and for his punctuality every day, sometimes as early as 2 a.m. in the morning. A special thank you to Birhanu Bekele for all his hard work, commitment and assistance in placing camera-traps. His dedication made Chapter VI possible. Another special thanks to João Guilherme for his help with camera-trap placement, for this support in the bird surveys, for making some camping trips a lot of fun and for I proofreading Chapter I. I am also very grateful to Tolani Asirat, Sintayehu Telila and Lemani Gebeyehu for their tireless work as translators and enumerators for Chapter VII. Thank you Amelie Schober for facilitating fieldwork with health experts. A special and sincere thank you to all the women that kindly shared their time and their thoughts on such a personal topic, they have made Chapter VII possible. Thank you to the kebele leaders that welcomed me in their beautiful landscape. A long period of data processing and data entry followed the fieldwork. I had the privilege to be surrounded by many student assistants that helped with these time-consuming, but fun tasks: thank you Annika Johanna Kettenburg, Katharina Wawerek, Jasmin Roetzer; Amy Newson, Stephanie Langenbuch and Hannes Eggert for helping with both picture classification and data entry. A warming thank you to Kristoffer Hylander and Feyera Senbeta for all your input on the different chapters and for such nice times and discussions in Ethiopia and Sweden. Another warming thank you to Dale Nimmo and his family for welcoming me and my family, down under in Australia, for a research stay at Charles Sturt University. Thank you Dale for providing the glue (Chapter VI) of this thesis. Another warm thank you to Matthias DeBeenhouwer for providing extra camera-traps and for joining forces for Chapter V. A word of appreciation is due to Chritiane Fluch for kindly facilitating all the administration related with the thesis submission, Susanne Hinck and Anja Thiem from the Forschungsservice for all the support and prompt feedback during my grant applications, and to Hannah Bradenburg and Sylvia Schmidt Perschke from the family services of Leuphana University. Words fall short to thank the friendship of Ine Dorresteijn, Julia Leventon and Aisa Manlosa during this journey. The juggling of motherhood and PhD was less insane because I had women like you around. It is hard to elaborate much here, all but a heartfelt thank you. Finally, I wish to thank all of my friends and family in Portugal and abroad, for all the care and support through these years. Obrigada! As anticipated, words fall short to thank all the love, support and strength I received from my husband João Guilherme and my daughter Carolina. You are my sunshine. And sunshine is everything. This thesis was funded by European Research Council (FP7-IDEAS-ERC, ID 614278), through the project SESyP - Identifiying Social-Ecological System Properties Benefiting Biodiversity and Food Security, granted to my supervisor Joern Fischer. Chapters I and VII were supported by a ProSCIENCE-writing grant, from Leuphana University. II Preface This cumulative dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doc. rer. nat. at Leuphana University. It consists of seven chapters based on empirical research in the southwest of Ethiopia, conducted between 2015 and 2020. The research described herein was part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative research project SESyP - Identifiying Social-Ecological System Properties Benefiting Biodiversity and Food Security, funded by the European Research Council (FP7-IDEAS-ERC, ID 614278). Together, the empirical studies presented in this dissertation contribute to the understanding of the biodiversity patterns in the southwest of Ethiopia and were designed with a context of land use change and human population growth in mind. Three chapters (II, IIIa-b and IV) are published, one is in revision (V) and two are submitted (VI, VII). The content of each chapter or appendix is the same as the published journal article. A reference to the journal in which each chapter is published, submitted or in revision, as well as its status and contributing co-authors is presented at the title page of each chapter. A list of references is provided at the end of each chapter. Some chapters are followed by supporting information. Stylistic differences (e.g. British or American English and formatting of references) are possible between chapters. In Chapter I, the synthesis, I alternate between the pronouns “I” and “we”, to acknowledge the collaborative nature of the research. Due to the stand-alone nature of the chapters, some repetition in the text of this dissertation was unavoidable. Data collection for this dissertation was made after all the relevant working permits (from kebele, woreda and zone levels, and from the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation
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