In May 2019 BBC Travel described children listening to a story under an African juniper in a small church forest near Debre Tabor in northern Ethiopia, part of a wider feature on sacred forests that Orthodox churches still protect.
Church forests are among the last patches of native Afromontane woodland in the northern highlands. Priests and communities treat the trees as holy ground, which has kept seeds, birds, and shade alive while surrounding farms cleared the land.
Scientists and filmmakers have increasingly studied these groves as living gene banks. For local people they remain worship space first, conservation second.
Kept as environment and culture archive, the BBC Travel scene dates a plain-language introduction to Ethiopia’s church forests for readers who meet them through tourism writing rather than only through academic papers.
Sources: BBC Travel