The project team of the DAAD project BIOCULT was represented at this year’s GTOE conference in Ceske Budejovice from 20.06. to 22.06.2023 with its own thematic session on “Culture and Conservation – Harnessing synergies between cultural traditions and biodiversity protection”. Besides interesting discussions during the poster sessions and coffee breaks, a variety of interesting results and aspects of the project could be presented to interested colleagues and visitors.
Although the GTOE is a conference focused on tropical ecology, the presentations from our transdisciplinary project were very well received by the auditorium and broadened the spectrum to include the cultural dimension for nature and biodiversity conservation in tropical forest areas. The following contributions were presented and discussed by the project team:
- Teucher, M.: BIOCULT- Harnessing synergies between cultural traditions and biodiversity protection in theory and practice
- Maghenda, M.: The Effects of Customary Fires for Rainfall Attraction in Taita Hills, Taita Taveta County Kenya
- Schmitt, T.: The last forest fragments of East Africa represent highly important refuge areas for butterfly conservation: the example of Kaya Kambe (southern Kenya)
- Shauri, H.: Integrating Cultural Values to Strengthen Conservation Action: The case of sacred Kaya Kambe forest in southern Kenya
- Wichmann, M.: Multivariate-statistical analysis of the relationship between the use of ecosystem services and the willingness to protect the Kaya Kambe (Kenya) based on empirical data
- Keck, D.: Multi-method research on the importance of traditional and state actors in forest conservation in Kenya, based on the example of Kaya Kambe
- Deffersha, H.: Conservation and Restoration of the Ethiopian Church Forests; a case study at Tara Gedam Church Forest
- Legesse, S.: Climate change mitigation strategies: The role of Ethiopian church forests
- Seifert, T.: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions Across Afro Tropical Forest islands
- Mwakumanya, M.: Evaluation of the Land cover Land use (LCLU) Change on the Taita hills forest fragments in Ngerenyi area, Taita Taveta County in Kenya
- Kung’u, G.: Effect of human activities on vegetation structure and arthropod availability in the Taita Hills: implication for birds
- Fungomeli, M.: Sacred forest fragments exhibit high forest structure, species composition and diversity: A study of the plant diversity and community structure of the Coastal forests of Kenya
