Abstract:
This study was aimed to generate information on the economic role of non-timber forest products to the rural livelihoods in Nono District, West Shoa Zone, and Oromia, Ethiopia. A total of 156 households were interviewed during formal questionnaire survey from forest adjacent kebeles, but 6 questionnaires were not return back and 150 questionnaires were collected through the help of enumerators. The qualitative data was summarized through narrative forms by using interview and quantitative data analyzed using descriptive statistics and OLS regressions using SPSS version 20. The results indicated that the people in the study area depend on different income sources. The study findings revealed that (79.33%) responded that they used for fire wood and charcoal consumptions and 20.7% responded no Results of the OLS indicated a positive significant relationship between Non-farm income and NTFPs in income ( = 0.0309) with income share of the NTFPs. The regression results showed that age, education, family size and land holding of the household head is negatively associated with both the probability and level of contribution of NTFPs to household income. Therefore, the researcher concluded that most of the forest adjacent communities were small scale farmers and local end-uses of NTFPs included fuel wood, charcoal uses, food, construction materials, plant medicine, honey production, grass for pasture, and traditional resources among others. The study concluded by recommending that policies, strategies and interventions that aim at reducing peoples dependence on natural resource (forest and forest resources) should be put in place to give due attention to community based natural resource management; capacity building of the newly formed Community Forest Association to enable them take up the challenges of management of the forest resources and a comprehensive study was needed to examine and quantify the amount of NTFPs collected over time against the existing store
