A pared down, efficient ecology crew left with the goal of hitting three forests today. We just needed to resurvey them, which only entails re-measuring tree diameter, taking soil cores and counting seedling plots. We should have been in and out of this forest in an hour but unfortunately had some trouble getting permissions quickly. First we had to wait for the priest to walk to the forest to meet us and then Mahalet had to do some negotiations. Meanwhile Cat, Max, Kate and I couldn’t do anything but look at the birds, which seem to be far more prolific than when we were here in the dry season. I can’t wait for Carrie to get here because we have seen so many beautiful song birds, eagles and cranes and she is our African bird expert. 
We were able to walk around the circumference of the forests while we waited and it looked to me like the forest was in even worse shape than 2014. They definitely have moved their agricultural fields closer to the edge and within the forest there are several new juniper plantations, which they will grow and sell for the purpose of building new churches. The distinctive features of this forest last time were an old rusted out tank sitting on the edge of the fields, which had been removed, and the awful burning thistles, which are fortunately not in season in May. It took almost two hours but we finally were given permission to start our work. Despite the small size of the forest (2.5 ha), we still had a difficult time finding our old plots. Part of the problem is that justica, a woody weed that grows like crazy, tends to take over any area where a tree has been cut down. We had to check almost every tree in the forest to see if their diameters matched what we had measured two years ago. What should have been an hour or two of work ended up taking about 5 hours. The highlight for me was a group of 4 little girls that walked around holding hands a few steps behind us and were just so sweet and shy.
Mahalet with our little posse of curious young scientists
We ate lunch on the road, which consisted of just bread because we left everything else in the other van, and headed to a forest that had been measured out in 2015. We had to hike about 1.5 km up a very rocky path that took us up to a plateau with an amazing view of the valley and lake Tana below. We could hear thunder coming in but the storm was moving away from us and just left us with a wonderful cool breeze while we watched the monkeys and birds running around in this forest. Mahalet went to find the priest while we did the walk around and this forest, despite being the same size as the last one, was much more beautiful. I’m sure part of it was the view, but they also had a wonderful wall, much greater diversity of trees and much fewer people. We were able to talk to the priest more quickly this time and decided just to locate our plots before heading back to Bahir Dar. After finding out second plot we could hear the thunder getting louder, another storm moving in, and decided it would be prudent to leave sooner than later. About two minutes after we left, it started to down pour. Max, Kate and I tried to out run the rain but quickly the road turned in to a stream and was too slippery. I just gave up, embraced the rain and by the time we got back to the van we were soaked to the bone and I had mud up to my knees.
The ride home was a soggy mess, all of us had puddles in our boots and for the first time since arriving in Ethiopia I was actually cold. Peter Scull had arrived while we were out in the field and after we tracked mud through the hotel and dried off, we had dinner at the hotel. Despite only having gotten here two days before him, we had lots to catch up on and Cat was already explaining all of the problems they needed to address in the coming week. Slowly but surely our crew is growing to full capacity!
Kelsey Beyond the 802 