Illegal miners, sand winners, and herdsmen are having a organization innovation tools day inside the Red Volta East and West Forest Reserves inside the Nabdam and Bawku West Districts of the Upper East Region.

The once-protected reserves have come beneath important threat as fashionable illegal movements continue to spoil large portions of the wooded space, pollute the Red Volta River, and endanger wildlife species that depend on the ecosystem for survival.

While some illegal miners have pitched camp deep inside the wooded space and are mining with impunity, some cattle herdsmen have moreover settled throughout the protected space, causing all manner of destruction.

Also, sand a success is happening along the banks of the river.

When Graphic Online visited the sector last Friday, it was once noticed that the Red Volta River had now grew to change into very dark brownish, suggesting a possible air air pollution within and upstream.

The reserve serves as a very powerful ecological buffer to the Red Volta River, which flows from neighbouring Burkina Faso throughout the Nabdam and Bawku West Districts into the White Volta.

Additionally, the reserve serves as a large corridor for the free movement of herds of elephants between the Nazinga Reserve in Burkina Faso and Ghana.

However, the Forestry Commission is having a tough time dealing with the positioning as a result of logistical constraints and inadequate staffing. 

These not easy scenarios, in step with officials, make it difficult to effectively follow and patrol the massive wooded space areas, thereby giving illegal operators room to continue their destructive movements.

Threat 

The Deputy Upper East Regional Manager of the Forestry Commission, Mark Adu Gamfi, knowledgeable Graphic Online’s Mohammed Fugu that the level of destruction may have consequences on biodiversity and the river.

He indicated that by means of intelligence-led operations, the Commission had previously arrested 19 people engaged in various environmental crimes within the reserve. 

The suspects, he discussed, have since been remanded into police custody by way of the Bolgatanga Circuit Court to lend a hand with further investigations.

Challenges 

Mr. Gamfi outlined that the reserve was once very large, and given the limited logistics and body of workers, it was once very difficult for them to patrol the entire protected space to flush out the perpetrators, who have been perpetually armed.

“Because of the invasion of the wooded space, it is destroying the habitat of the elephants, which perpetually compels them to stray into other people’s farms. They are every now and then shot and killed for destroying farms and houses,” he discussed.

Background 

The Red Volta East and West Forest Reserves form part of a group of wooded space reserves along the valleys of the Red and White Volta rivers inside the northern-savanna transitional zone of Ghana. 

The plants is largely savanna woodland with gallery forests along the river corridors (the Red Volta and White Volta). 

These wooded space reserves are a key elephant migratory corridor in Ghana and West Africa, since the ecosystem is helping the movement of herds of the savanna elephant between Ghana and neighbouring Burkina Faso. 

The reserve is beneath heavy threat as a result of encroachment, illegal mining, sand a success, cattle grazing, agricultural clearing, and other human-driven movements that degrade the wooded space, river corridors, and wildlife habitat. 

Given its significance for elephants and biodiversity, this degradation poses important conservation risks, along with upper human–elephant struggle. 

DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by way of Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or protection of Multimedia Group Limited.

DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by way of Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or protection of Multimedia Group Limited.