The Lawns They Call Jungles in Ghana

 

Illegal small-scale mining, infamous for its role in the destruction of the physical environment, is clearly not the only cause of depletion of Ghana’s forest estate. Imperceptibly, but steadily, the government is tackling this menace with an innovative approach. While degraded lands due to mining call for mechanized exercise in land reclamation, the Forest Plantation Fund Board, is also turning the other strand by engaging farmers in the roll back efforts.

Farming, and for that matter the green economy cause erosion of the forest ecosystem, hence farmers are now being employed to protect their turfs, and this goes with incentives.

 

The exercise which was initiated in 2019 is being upscaled incrementally, the early stages of implementation to be likened to a pilot phase. It is known that farmers mutilate the forest cover as they engineer space to crop land. The roll back policy does not impede their core business but it is to be simultaneously managed with existing plantation on the land. This then means the farmers will weed undergrowth, plant new seedlings, and intercrop for the maximum result of protecting the ecology and food production.

 

Cattle-ranching is the other difficulty confronting the forest restoration exercise. Nomadic herdsmen have also returned to the wilderness and left in their tracks, a considerable devastation to the forest cover. The animals feeds on the elephant grass but in times of scarcities as the period of harmattan, the herdsmen set fire to the vegetation to induce green foliage in new plant cycle. Some pasture thrive in stress conditions. We cannot blink on the activities of chainsaw operators, illegal forest logging.

How do all these hazards bypass checks to escape arrest? Certainly, this aspect of subject-matter will be revisited.Forestry officials have been trying to salvage the situation by planting teak trees. These are plants proven to be more resistant to fire. The risk is that the teak plant might gradually replace indigenous tree species as odum, Wawa, onyina, etc, in the freak desire to replace them with teak in the face of fire hazards.

The critical role of the CSIR Forestry Research Institute of Ghana in the scheme of things cannot be glossed over. The institute located in the Ashanti regional capital, Kumasi, provides planting material for the regeneration of lost forests.
Private Seedling growing companies within the operational chain, source seeds from the institute.

 

The institute may have more significant and extensive roles to play in testing various tree species that are mowed for reasons other than those officially specified, in the determination of what is appropriate for each ecological zone.

At a farm village called Bonsukrom-Bethlehem in Ahafo Ano South-West district of Ashanti region retraces its roots to forefathers. It has barely advanced beyond its original state, perhaps preserved to maintain its peculiar identity of having just a few structures built of natural clay, and surrounded by a heavy vegetative belt. In front of one of the mud-made houses sat Alice Bonsu, a great great granny of her ancestors.

 

It takes almost 50 minutes to reach the deep forests from this settlement on foot. Others commute longer distances to this area for their chores. Here was to be found the lone Ama Serwaa Bonsu, the younger sister of Alice, in the thick of affairs weeding around a variety of crops on the farmland cast within the last vestiges Ghana’s rainforest.

The crops include pawpaw, cocoyam and kontomire, plantain, pineapple, maize, cassava, and garden eggs. In following the ages-long family tradition, the Bonsus and the new generation of farmers are fearless in the sometimes frightening conditions of their work.

They face dangerous reptiles and a potential deadly encounter with bees, as well as the unpredictable waves of assault by nomadic herdsmen. There have been reports of attempted and actual rape of women farmers inside the jungles.

 

In the face of these existential threats, the farmers who are now agents of afforestation seek protective work gears, increase in rémunération and a more rigorous forestry security to ward off any danger.

From the birds eye point of view, and that is literally given when flying low on an aircraft, one obtains the full grasp of the urgency attached to this whole business of restoring lost vegetative cover. Large swathes of what was originally Ghana’s forest belts are turning into anything below tall savannah grasslands. At best, the worsening forms of Ghana’s depleted forests that are not induced by mining, may be labelled as “lawns” but there are severer downgrades caused by the deep excavation associated with mining .

 

This only explains the drift towards or arrival of climate change, the loss of certain tree species native to Ghana, and of course, the dwindling numbers of wildlife resulting in price gouges.

Some farmers have observed increased rainfall in the forests when newly planted trees had thickened the Grove. The clump of trees considered worthy grounds for this experiment.