Ethiopian Heritage Trust


A not-for-profit charity supporting the Ethiopian Heritage Trust in Addis Ababa

Entoto Natural Park

Restoring Nature

 

This is the main project of the Ethiopian Heritage Trust.

 

The Park is 13 square kilometres and lies immediately north of Addis Ababa.

3.1.1 The Ethiopian Heritage Trust

Further Information
The Ethiopia Heritage Trust (EHT or the Trust) is a newly started Ethiopian voluntary organization, and is in its constitution non-political, non-religious and non-profiting. Founded by private individuals wishing to make a personal contribution towards stopping the decay and the destruction of the historical buildings and natural environment of the country, the organization has from the beginning been supported by the Administration of Region 14. Membership is open to all after paying an annual or lifetime fee.


Article 3 regarding the aim of the Ethiopia Heritage Trust claims: "The Trust is to act as a body of sites and buildings of historical and/or aesthetic interest and of lands of natural beauty to be preserved for present and future generations" (Statues of The Ethiopia Heritage Trust, pg 1)

a) The Governing Council

Ethiopian Heritage Trust (EHT) is ruled by a governing Council, consisting of 14 councillors, elected by the members of the EHT. Among its duties is to perform all acts necessary for the EHT, such as acquiring aesthetically and historically interesting sites and buildings and the land of natural beauty, repairing, restoring and conserving such sites, buildings and land to the highest standard, and improving awareness regarding issues of conservation and preservation in Ethiopia.

b) The Park Committee

From the Governing Council, a number of committees have emerged. One of them is the Park Committee, which has the determination to create a natural park of high quality for the citizens of Addis Ababa on the slopes of Entoto mountain. Most of the Park Committee members have full employment elsewhere, a fact that so far has steered the meetings of the Committee towards evening time. During our stay, the Park Committee had regular meetings every second week, often with an additional four hours-walk on Entoto on Sundays. At every meeting, often held in the home of one of the Park Committee members, a list of minutes is taken in order to clarify the duties to be carried out until the next meeting and to check up on the results since the previous meeting. Decisions can not be taken until the members of the Park Committee unanimously agreed upon them.



Acknowledgements


The forming of a planning structure around Entoto Natural Park in order to create and transform the 17 km area is a huge task. The difficulties to solve many fields of knowledge and therefore, the members have to use a cross-sectoral approach. Gradually, during many informal discussions, a way of dealing with a certain problem is found. When more debate is needed, the Park Committee has talked over a specific issue at a subcommittee meeting. (An example of questions discussed at a Park Committee meeting can be found in Annex 3.)

 

In the National Conservation
Strategy, it is expressed that:

  • Heritage significance indicates historical, aesthetic, social, scientific or other values for past, present and future generations,

  • Heritage is living and is not a museum of protected objectives but part of people's lives,

  • Heritage is a continuum of cultural expression from natural wilderness to urban areas,

  • Heritage conservation should be seen as part of and integrated with Ethiopia's generally social and economic development,

  • The national heritage should not be seen as the responsibility of the government alone, and so communities should play a leading role in assessing and nominating places or items of heritage significance and in conserving them,

  • A sustainable heritage conservation and management programme should seek to understand all the elements of the system, their interrelationships and the way in which each contributes to social and economic development. (Ibid, pg 97)

 (HΓ₯kan Blanck and Pia Englund, Entoto Natural Park 1995)


The organization, Ethiopian Heritage Trust, is devoted to the restoration of Ethiopia's indigenous Nature and also the sincere work preserving the country's precious heritage in culture. With high priority, the Ethiopian Heritage Trust laid the ground for understanding the importance of an indigenous forest's effect on the country's natural health. The organization's work with planting native saplings illuminates the landscape's healing capacity with precision thanks to this native forest. The importance of careful research regarding knowledge in natural science gives an intense and evident example before any foreign species is regarded as possible for an introduction into an unfamiliar and vulnerable habitat.


The Eucalyptus Problem


  Ethiopian Heritage Trust  

  Environmental Restoration  

  Volunteering  

  Terracing  

  Check Dams  

  Water Reservoirs  

  Spring Water Ideas  

  Retaining Walls  

  Benefits of the Park's Work  




Ethiopia's Unique Highland Landscape and Climate

Regarding Ethiopia's unique climate in the seasons, with months of heavy downpours over the country's characteristic rugged landscape topography followed by months of blistering sunshine, difficulties naturally arise for the survival of planted saplings. The long prehistoric Nature's evolutionary optimized stability in sheer strength and water absorption found in the original native vegetation is thus often impossible to recreate with a simple planting of fragile young seedlings. Therefore, Ethiopia's neglected indigenous Nature demands knowledge and work before any sign of evident healing of the country's Nature and freshwater conservation. Consequently, it is often associated with incredible frustration to recreate healthy landscape biotopes by replanting native young plants on exposed eroded mountain slopes and devastated high plateaus. Instead, sporadically planted young plants will require tender care with irrigation and protection against grazing animals and shade from season months of midday's mercilessly blistering sunshine. This recreation of Nature's shielding functions needs, thus, the devoted work of restoration to regain the guardian effect from a lost indigenous forest with its endemic vegetation of shielding undergrowth.


The Complications Of Indigenous Forest Restoration

Thus, it is impossible to recreate a stable and healthy nature by replanting a few native trees on a devastated plateau; instead, these sporadically planted young plants on the table will require tender care with irrigation and protection against grazing animals and shade from the blistering seasonal sun. Furthermore, on the slopes, these young plants most often need some temporary stabilizer of the ground and protection in something that mimics the wind and sun-protective effect of many mother trees. In addition, sporadically placed young plants can only offer a very rudimentary and weak protective network against erosion; instead, there is the obvious risk that these young plants will, in all probability, soon perish in the struggle against the great forces of Nature.


The Precarious and Fragile Restoration Of the Lost Nature

 Science, much time and labour are needed for environmental restoration; this demands massive protection projects to offer the young plants the replacement for the lost biotope and its vital natural protective properties. Hence, restoring a lost biotope is very complicated and requires much work to recreate a reliable substitute for the lost shielding armour of the primaeval forest. Therefore, due to the absence of the essential protective functions of mother trees and other plants, enormous efforts are required to recreate these guardian functions for the tender indigenous seedlings, which otherwise do not survive the very exposed ground. Thus, this process of environmental restoration includes what was previously prehistorically self-evident as a crucial basis for the survival of all higher life forms.



Water and Land Restoration  

π‘Šπ‘Žπ‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ πΆπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘Žπ‘‘π‘–π‘œπ‘› π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž πΊπ‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π΅π‘’π‘Žπ‘’π‘‘π‘¦

Within the historical records appear several practical and aesthetical possibilities for restoration. These options for aesthetical restorations include water management, ground stability, and the most attractively pleasurable recreation paths. Another way of describing these methods for natural conservation is the effectiveness of the irrigation method when combined with very gentle and beautiful hiking trails above dizzying precipices. Through these micro canals' associated need for strength and reliability, this need for reinforced waterways coincides with the suitability of dramatically beautiful and safe hiking trails where the steep slopes above or beneath these paths deliver an extraordinary beauty over grand views of often impossible precipitous.




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𝑨𝒓𝒕 𝑺𝒉𝒐𝒑: 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒆 & π‘Ύπ’Šπ’π’…π’π’Šπ’‡π’†


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Please note that the artwork on the right is not included in this sale.

Email: info@ethiopianheritagetrustuk.org
Phone: 0300 365 1417.



Ethiopian Heritage Trust

The goal is to cover the Park with indigenous trees and bring back the native flowers and shrubs, birds and mammals which used to abound in the area.

Over 600,000 indigenous trees have been planted.

To control water flow and prevent erosion 200 kilometres of terracing and 15 kilometres of check dams have been built.

As a result, 13 springs have developed.

115 species of bird have been recorded, including 5 of Ethiopia’s endemic species.

With the growing maturity of the trees native shrubs and herbaceous plants can be seen, such as bulleia polystachya, bidens pachyloma, and geranium arabicum.

The number of indigenous tree seedlings planted in the Park over the last 3 years has been:

2018    8,000

2019  25,000

2020    9,400
(Covid 19 caused considerable problems for the tree planting operation in 2020.)

This momentum has to be maintained to complete the long-term vision of a green haven; at least a further 10 years of effort will be required.


Website:  Contact Us






π‘¬π’•π’‰π’Šπ’π’‘π’Šπ’‚π’ π‘―π’†π’“π’Šπ’•π’‚π’ˆπ’† 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 (𝑼𝑲)

π‘‡β„Žπ‘’ π‘‘π‘œπ‘‘π‘Žπ‘™ π‘Žπ‘šπ‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘ π‘¦π‘œπ‘’ π‘‘π‘œπ‘›π‘Žπ‘‘π‘’ 𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 πΈπ‘‘β„Žπ‘–π‘œπ‘π‘–π‘Ž.
π‘‡β„Žπ‘’ π‘‡π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘‘ 𝑖𝑠 π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘”π‘–π‘ π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘‘ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π»π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘€π‘Žπ‘—π‘’π‘ π‘‘π‘¦’𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑒 π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ πΆπ‘’π‘ π‘‘π‘œπ‘šπ‘  π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ 𝐺𝑖𝑓𝑑 𝐴𝑖𝑑.

Ethiopian Heritage Trust (UK)






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