Highland Bamboo (Yushania Alpina) Distribution, Challenges And Opportunities In Jibat District, West Shoa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia

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.