Ethiopia has a long history of deforestation and land degrada- tion. The situation is extremely critical in Tigray, the north- ernmost province, where the study site is located. The orginally wides pread climax forest is now reduced to rare relic stands. Since 20 years local communities trie to restore the forest resource by closing areas from cattle. This study aims at getting a better understanding of ecological processes in new and ancient forests to identify possible limitations of this management strategy. To do so, the plant functional attributes of the tree layer is studied, such as seed characteristics, plant morphology and vegetation structure, together with a number of abiotic site characteristics.