From Naabenyin Joojo Amissah
Tropenbos International Ghana, a forestry research institution in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, has handed over a 56 hectare agroforestry plantation at Breman Anhwiam in the Esikuma Odobeng Brakwa District in the Central Region, to the Ghana Forestry Commission.
The plantation was done by former illegal chainsaw operators, machine owners and lumber carriers who have collectively abandoned their illegal activities after the implementation of EU-CSM project activities, and was sponsored by the European Union.
The plantation has varieties of species such as Tectona grandis, Cedralla adorata, Terminala superba, Kyaya Spp and Nauclea Diderrichii, and it is aimed at resurrecting the Supon Forest Reserve in the Breman Anhwiam-Assin Fosu District.
Mr. Ebenezer Djabletey, Central Regional Director of the Forestry Commission, expressed his appreciation to members of the association and the community for their interest in the plantation project, and promised that more degraded land would offered to them for reforestation.
It would be recalled that the Supon Forest Reserve, which is one of the forest reserves in the Central Region, has been degraded by the nefarious activities of illegal chainsaw operators for a very long time.
These chainsaw operators and their collaborators, for many years, depended solely on the degradation of the forest reserve by felling the trees and selling them in commercial quantities, as their main source of livelihood.
So lucrative was this illegal business that many young men and women in the area, in particular Nyamebekyere Camp, did not want to venture into any other form for occupation.However, Tropenbos International, in its quest to save the natural reserve and protect it from over-exploitation, trained over 40 illegal chainsaw operators and their collaborators.
The training was aimed at ultimately transforming illegal chainsaw milling operators into environmentally-conscious artisanal millers, interested in improving Ghana’s forest cover and practicing sustainable forest management, and were then provided with hybrid cocoa pods for initial establishment
The reforestation activities are being ran on the basis of the Modified Taungya System, with the Forestry Commission and TBI Ghana as the ‘investors’, while the associations function as the “community”. Members of the association take 100% of all food stuffs and non-timber products produced, while the land owners take 15% of the timber component, with the association and the Forestry Commission taking 40% each.
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