Urgency in preserving the conservation legacy of sacred groves amid rapid land use change in north-central Ethiopia

In north-central Ethiopia, areas surrounding monasteries and churches serve as sanctuaries for relict vegetation. However, land use/land cover (LULC) changes challenge the ecological health and long-term sustainability of these sacred groves. As the first of its kind, this study examined LULC change within a 5 km radius of the Shenkora Yohannes Monastery and Janbaria Bealewold Church Forests over the past 40 years (1984–2024) at 10 year intervals and projected it over 10 years to 2034. We used Google Earth Engine and its built-in Random Forest classifier to process Landsat images and make LULC change maps. The change maps have overall accuracies of ≥ 90% and kappa coefficients of ≥ 0.85. Our findings indicate that over the past four decades, cropland expanded by more than 30% within a 5 km radius of both sacred groves. Additionally, built-up areas showed the greatest spatial differences, with the highest coefficients of variation (103% and 89%) and annual rates of increment (9.7% and 12%) within a 5 km radius of Shenkora Yohannes Monastery and Janbaria Bealewold Church Forests, respectively. In both study sites, built-up areas and croplands expanded at the cost of relict shrublands and forests. These sacred groves have long played a key role in conserving natural forests; the unstable, uncertain, and advancing LULC change within 5 km radius indicates that this legacy diminishes over time. Hence, coordinated action by local governments, religious institutions, and communities, as well as legal protection and precautionary measures for sacred groves, is essential to curb uncontrolled land-use changes.