AN ASSESSMENT OF PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION ON FOREST MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF GESSA TOWN

The complex nature of natural resource management demands research that uses an interdisciplinary approach by combining biophysical and socio-economic. Community based participation on natural resource management is being adopted widely as a possible solution to address such complex problems. Moreover, lack of active community participation on forest resource management causes the loss of available forests in the study area. Deforestation for fuel wood, house construction and human settlement become the serious problem for forest resource destruction in the area. Objective of the study is to assess the community participation in forest resource management in the Gassa town, Dawro zone, southern Ethiopia. The primary data obtained from the fieldwork were supplemented by secondary data in order to bridge information gap from primary sources. Secondary sources include published materials such as reports, official records, census records, project reports, research papers and data files from internet/ web pages. Survey result indicated that Forest management major problem were deforestation and less participation on management practices, which affected level of economic income, age group, sex ratio, marital status and education level