Author(s)

Daniabla Natacha Edwige Thiombiano, Niéyidouba Lamien, Ana M. Castro-Euler, Barbara Vinceti, Dolores Agundez, Issaka Joseph Boussim

Bioversity International, CGIAR, Headquaters: Via Dei TreDenari, Rome, Italy.
Département de Production Forestière, Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles, Koudougou, Burkina Faso.
INIA-CIFOR, Dpto Sistemas y Recursos Forestales, Carretera de la Coru?a, Madrid, Spain.
Instituto Estadual de Floresta, Embrapa Amapa Rodovia Juscelino Kubitschek, Macapa, Brazil.
Laboratoire de Biologie et d’Ecologie Végétales, Université de Ouagadougou, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

We examined demand and supply of Food Tree Species (FTS) products in Burkina Faso. The hypotheses were: 1) demand for FTS products by local communities exceeds what can be sustainably extracted, and 2) local communities of the Sudanian zone have access to more diverse FTS products compared to Sahelian zone. Surveys were conducted in 300 households and 360 quadrats in landscapes surrounding 6 villages to determine the diversity, richness and availability of FTS. The results indicate that local communities tend to exploit FTS which are rare to find or absent in the landscape surrounding their village. While the range of FTS largely exploited tends to coincide across the two ecological zones, the diversity and density of the preferred FTS are discordant between the two zones. The results of the present study further support the need for conservation and restoration strategies to sustain the local communities demand for FTS products.

Human Feeding; Food Security; Indigenous Knowledge; Quantitative Ethnobotany; Diversity, Threats

Thiombiano, D. N. E. , Lamien, N. , Castro-Euler, A. M. , Vinceti, B. , Agundez, D. & Boussim, I. J. (2013). Local Communities Demand for Food Tree Species and the Potentialities of Their Landscapes in Two Ecological Zones of Burkina Faso. Open Journal of Forestry, 3, 79-87. doi: 10.4236/ojf.2013.33014.