Local people’s perceptions of forest and trees ecosystem services : case of Kalounaye managed forest.

Abstract

Human use of vegetation has a long tradition in semi-arid West Africa, and local people highly appreciate the goods and services provided by woody plants. Our study aims to identify the ecosystem services of the Kalounaye managed forest and woody species for the surrounding villages in the communes of Ouonck and Coubalan. To do that, surveys based on individual interviews and focus group discussions and field observations were carried out. 179 individual interviews and 12 focus group discussions were done. A semi-structured with free-listing approach was used to collect ethno botanical and ecosystem services data. The importance attributed to each category of ecosystem services and species was evaluated using use value (UV), informant consensus factor (ICF), citation frequency (CF) and fidelity level (FL). Local people considered Provisioning services characterized by a use value of 79% as the most important forest and trees function. Cultural services (13%) were the second most important ecosystem services provided by forest and trees followed by regulating/supporting services (8%). A total of 27 species listed by the populations participated in the provision of ecosystem services. However, the informant consensus factor for ecosystem services was greater than 80%. The managed Kalounaye forest is rich in very important species that provided provisioning, regulating/supporting and cultural services for the surrounding populations.