Nigeria Seeks to Save Forest Amid Growing Population

The dense rain forest of southeastern Nigeria survived the Ice Age only to be locked in a life and death struggle with the 20th Century.

From the air the forest still looks invulnerable, but barren patches appearing in the age-old jungle bear testimony to the “slash and burn” farming that exhausts the soil and makes new forest growth impossible.

“Forest can become desert in as little as 20 years,” said Philip Hall, technical director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

The thick vegetation of the Kanyang Mountains and the Oban Hills in southeastern Nigeria’s Cross River State is just a fragment of the forest that used to cover 72,000 square miles of the country.

More than 90% of Nigeria’s original jungle has been destroyed over the last 50 years by clearance for timber, urban development and the growing pressure for farmland, Hall said.

Further deforestation would disrupt weather patterns and water supplies, he said.

Threat to Fishing Grounds

In addition, soil washed off the bare land would silt up rivers and kill the coastal mangrove habitats, threatening West Africa’s richest fishing grounds off the coasts of Nigeria and Cameroun.

The Cross River forests have been evolving relatively undisturbed by climactic changes for 200 million years, producing a rich variety of animal, bird and insect species unique in Africa, said Julian Caldecott, managing a World Wide Fund for Nature project in the area.

“It’s what we call a Pleistocene refuge, a rare part of the globe which has remained wet forest through the dry ice ages of the Earth’s Pleistocene Era,” he said.

Gorillas, thought to be extinct in Nigeria since soon after World War II, were rediscovered in the Kanyang Mountains region of the jungle early last year.

Protecting them from local hunters, who prize them as meat, has become a celebrated element in a much broader conservation program supported by Nigerian federal and state governments and with funding from Britain and the European Community.

Caldecott heads a team working with state government staff to set up the Cross River State National Park, initiated by the two environmental groups.

Forest Conservation Scheme

He said the project, one of the world’s biggest forest conservation schemes, covered 1,200 square miles. The southern Oban Hills sector adjoins the 640-square-mile Korup National Park over the border in Cameroun.

The aim is to combine conservation with helping people survive in the environment without destroying it.

Saving the gorillas would also benefit the Boki people, who share the forest and rely on it for their livelihood, said Pius Anadu, executive director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

The Boki live in the mountains around Kanyang, growing cocoa and other crops, hunting and gathering the fruits of the forest, and fishing in its rivers.

They have adopted a self-imposed ban on killing gorillas, and two young men, once hunters, have become game guides working with the Conservation Foundation.

Rurual Development Projects

The National Parks plan tries to help them and other people living in and around the forests through rural development projects, surveying for leaves, roots and resins that can be eaten or used to make medicines and pesticides, by developing tourist potential, and by cultivating timber.

Nigeria, once a net timber exporter, introduced a ban in 1974 to conserve raw materials for local manufacturers.

The country consumes huge amounts of wood. Hall said figures from international agencies suggest that Nigeria would have to spend $600 million a year on imports by the year 2,000, or establish 4,000 square miles of plantations.

“We have to concentrate on non-native tropical varieties like Asian teak, which can be cultivated to make pulp, paper and veneers,” said Rasheed Saba, a forestry expert with the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The African tropical hardwoods lost through deforestation, like iroko, opepe and obeche, are irreplaceable because it takes a lifetime of devotion to nurture them to maturity,” he said.

Reforestation Need

Hall said a serious threat remained from large-scale felling by commercial forestry companies with existing concessions. “They have to be persuaded to replant,” he said.

Deforestation is a problem for the whole nation, and the government gave $270,000 to a Conservation Fund appeal fund in February.

Despite Nigeria’s huge land area of almost 380,000 square miles, pressure from a booming population of more than 100 million for land for farming and grazing is intense.

Attempts to alleviate the problem with dam building and irrigation in some areas have disrupted river systems and killed off huge expanses of natural vegetation in others.

In the northern states of Kano and Borno, bordering the Saharan republics of Niger and Chad, desert dunes have engulfed once fertile land and overwhelmed villages.

“Everyone knows there is a crisis,” Saba said. “But where are the resources to avert it? What alternative do people have to burning the bush for farm land or cutting trees for firewood?”