Whirlwind exploration of Ethiopia, well, the Wondo Genet watershed region towards the south to be exact, with a few days of Addis Ababa and the Bale mountains thrown in. I was very confused when told that we would be going to Ethiopia for our summer tropical forestry course. Forests? in Ethiopia? I was pleasantly surprised. We visited working forests, sacred forests, public forests that are being cleared illegally for settlement and firewood, and community managed forests. The natural forests we visited were dominated by Juniper and Podocarpus - incredulous species if given the opportunity to grow. Unfortunately, the population pressure makes this quite an oddity. As for wildlife, there were colobus monkeys, baboons, some other type of monkey that was all over the campus where we stayed, warthogs, horn-bills - these were the exciting ones. We
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