Abstract:
Highland bamboo (Yushania alpine) is a perennial, multipurpose and fast growing plant that
supports local livelihoods in many ways. However, for long its uses have been limited to
traditional applications. Although bamboo has quit high distribution and widely utilized by a
large number of local communities in the study area, little baseline (data base) on its
distribution status exist for several years. Therefore, the present study was aimed to examine
the distribution, opportunities of highland bamboo and the associated challenges for its
expansion. For this study, four Kebeles were purposely selected among the 18 rural kebeles
within the district based on the availability of highland bamboo resources, its potential and
significance to the community. Semi-structured questionnaires, focus group discussion, observation, key informant interviews and handheld GPS were used for data collection. A
total of 144 household respondents were selected by simple random sampling techniques.
Descriptive statistical and remote sensing with Google Earth Pro and QGIS tools were used to
analyze variables. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as means,
frequency distribution and percentages. Maps of bamboo growing location helped in ground
truthing. GPS coordinates were used to validate the bamboo presence with an accuracy of
78%.The study revealed that about 691.56 ha of land was covered by highland bamboo
plantation under 15 kebeles of the district, with the maximum bamboo distribution recorded
in Jibat mountain forest with 147.32 ha, representing 21.3 % of the total bamboo while. Shenen town was the least kebele with an estimated area of 1.95 ha representing 0.28 % in the
study area. It was also observed that there was unequal distribution of highland bamboo in the
different kebeles of the district, the presence of bamboo resource, economic potentiality of
highland bamboo, presence of educational institutions and the existence of promising policy
of environment, fast growing nature of highland bamboo were the opportunities which would
be helpful to develop this resource. However, highland bamboo cultivation and conservation
was constrained by challenges such as infrastructure problem, bamboo management
problems, less market demand and land scarcity. Generally, it could be concluded that, unless
reversing mechanisms are designed, it would be a big challenge to exploit this potential
resource, so these results can orientate integrated research and development interventions
involving different managements techniques should be employed to exploit the opportunities,
get ride the challenges that constrain the highland bamboo.
