Mr Joe Appiah Frimpong, the Aowin District Manager, Forestry Commission, has called on stakeholders to embrace collaborative forest management to help protect forest reserves in the country.
According to him, in the past the forestry commission used to protect forest reserves alone but with the increase in population and activities of illegal miners and loggers, it is important to work together to save the nation’s forest from further depletion.
Mr Appiah, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Enchi, said the commission would continue to engage with stakeholders, opinion leaders and residents who lived along the forest reserves on the need to help protect the forest.
He said his outfit was doing everything within its powers to protect all the eight forest reserves within the Aowin Forestry Division and appealed to the residents to support the commission to make it a reality.
He announced that the Rapid Response Team was able to seize 34 excavators from the Tano Awia forest reserve and 11 from Tano Nomire portion of the forest and called for additional staff to augment the current 59 staff to fight illegal logging and mining to the barest minimum.
The District Manager said the recent visit by NAIMOS to the area yielded positive results and appealed to the Ghana Immigration Service and Customs to effectively protect the country’s borders.
He cautioned the general public, especially illegal loggers and miners, to desist from the practice, since the government and the forestry commission had in place a number of task forces to deal with anyone who engaged in illegal activities in forest reserves.
Source: accessagric.com
