15. Religion and the Management of the Commons. The Sacred Forests of Epirus

Sacred natural sites (SNS), and especially forests, constitute almost certainly the world’s oldest conservation systems. The reasons for their maintenance are related very often with concrete ways of managing local resources and ecosystems, through religious rules. In Zagori and Konitsa, NW Greece sacred forests exist in most villages. Their vegetation and forest structure variety along with cultural elements, such as identities of the communities who had established them, the purpose of their establishing, the different rituals implemented for their transformation from profane to sacred, associated taboos, and their particular history create their unique character. Accepted uses in sacred forests are depended to the purpose of their establishment. More often hunting, grazing, collection of plants, mushrooms, and dead branches are allowed, while taboos are mainly connected with the trees themselves. Sacred forests display nowadays a newly emerged value for biodiversity conservation and they can serve as a locally adapted exemplar of successful historical conservation systems.