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A woman walks through a forest
Religious groups own or influence around 5% of global forests. Photograph: Alamy
Religious groups own or influence around 5% of global forests. Photograph: Alamy

Save our sacred woodlands

This article is more than 12 years old
Religious groups have an important role to play in preserving many important and biodiverse forests that are under threat

It is time for religious communities to speak up for their unique woodlands and sacred groves scattered around the world. Religious groups own or influence an estimated 5% of global forests, some of which contain the richest biodiversity on the planet. These forests also host ancient cultural traditions, which hold secrets as to how religions such as Hinduism evolved and absorbed other lesser known practices over hundreds of years. Both the biodiversity and the traditions are now under threat.

The danger is compounded because there are few means of knowing the boundaries of such forests, making it harder to defend their rights. Into this breach, however, has stepped a team of conservationists, environmentalists and zoologists from Oxford University.

The Oxford team – Dr Shonil Bhagwat, Professor Kathy Willis and graduate student Ashley Massey – have begun the task of mapping religious forest sites throughout the world. They have been working in close co-operation with Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and the scientists behind another similar project, Sanasi. Areas currently studied include 11.5 hectares (28.41 acres) of church forest in Ethiopia, several hectares of Catholic forest in Central Italy, 5,400 hectares (13,344 acres) of Shinto forest in Japan and unending hectares of woodland in India. Plans to use crowd-sourcing to map further sites are being explored. If you stumble across a shrine on your travels, then email the Biodiversity Institute at the Oxford Martin School.

Accounts of sacred forests being bulldozed are becoming weekly events. In other parts of the world the booming interest in pilgrimage is also putting a strain on such sites. Increasingly, woodland-based hermitages and shrines in Italy are being decorated with plastic bags, litter and human detritus. Films such as Emilio Estevez's The Way, which features Martin Sheen travelling the El Camino de Santiago from France to Spain, have probably contributed to this.

From his extensive wanderings in south Asia, Bhagwat has found that some regions of India feature one sacred forest for every 300 hectares (741 acres). The biodiversity in these groves is also very rich. For example, in the state of Karnataka in southern India, he came across the "poison arrow tree" and rare plantations of fig. They are now under threat. In the sacred groves of the Kodagu district, nearly one-third of the macrofungi are not thought to exist anywhere else in the world. Bhagwat believes that mapping these forests will strengthen the legal rights of the religious communities who run the groves: "Where data is available about the boundaries of these forests, it will hopefully give the local communities an instrument to help argue that these are the sites that they have traditionally been protecting for a long time. They are sites which have lasted through several generations."

Fabrizio Frascaroli of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, is also involved in the mapping project. He has spent two years researching religious woods and forests in central Italy. Frascaroli has studied many of the holm-oak forests where St Francis chatted among the birds and allegedly wrote the world's first nativity play. However, he is riled that some Catholic communities are not doing more to preserve these sacred sites. One shrine in Lazio, for example, close to the border of Abruzzo, which attracts thousands of pilgrims a year, is in state of disarray, he said.

"I turned up to the site as a tourist and found that it had been trashed with litter and plastic bags everywhere. I remember seeing a cardboard box for a toy machine gun littering the woodland."

He said the custodian of the shrine had blamed the mess on the Italian authorities. Frascaroli, however, would like to see Catholic communities tackling this in both their theology and action.

"As much as Catholic leaders speak about abortion and other issues in their preaching, they need to make sure that maltreating your surroundings is taught as a sin against creation," he said. "I think there is a bit of an impasse, or obstacle, that many churchmen come across. Environmental care is part of their theology, but it is not yet part of their daily walk."

Over Christmas, in those awkward silences as you stare vacantly at your baubled spruce, think of the sacred groves.

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