Begoro (E/R) Aug. 14, GNA - Peri-forest reserve communities have been called upon to be vigilant and to arrest chainsaw operators and staff of the Forestry Services Division who assist them to deplete the country's remaining forest resources.

Mr Isaac Boamah Donteng, District Forest Manager, Begoro Forest District, who made the call, said the connivance of forestry staff in chainsaw operations was on the increase hence the need for the communities themselves to be on the look out.

He said the Police were sometimes also implicated, adding: "The forest belongs to the communities and the nation as a whole hence the need for all to join hands in saving the nation's remaining forest." Mr Donteng was speaking to a team of Journalists, who toured some parts of the Eastern Region to see at first hand the state of the nation's forest.

He said, "chainsaw operation has become rampant because no capital was needed for its operation, though the returns are huge so far as one was not caught. All that one needed was a chainsaw whether owned or borrowed." Mr Donteng said.

Mr Donteng said the Division in collaboration with the Fanteakwa District Assembly has been making some arrests.

"This time the operations are mainly done in the night and the operators are heavily armed," he said.

He said the state of degradation in some of the forest reserves in the area was quite alarming and that the Dede and the Worobong North Reserves, which covered a land area of 5,100 and 1,320 hectares, respectively, were totally degraded, becoming more or less savannah grasslands.

For the Worobong South and the Southern Scarp Reserves, which covered an area of 10,620 and 15, 460 hectares, respectively, the level of degradation was 7,434 and 6,184 hectares representing about 70 per cent and 40 per cent of degradation.

Mr Donteng said the only reserve in the area, which had not witnessed any degradation, was the Atewa Reserve, which has its 23,662 hectares intact though there had been occasions that chainsaw operators had stolen a few timber logs from it.

He said the Forestry Services Division in collaboration with the fringe communities has embarked on reforestation programmes in the devastated reserves through the Taungya system, which involved the cultivation of food crops alongside timber species on forest-demarcated lands.

Tree species such as Teak, Cedrella, Odum, Wawa and Cassia have been planted.

The objective of the Tuangya system is to give the local communities employment, boast their food production and grow trees for the conservation of the forest area. Mr Donteng said the farmers would have a share in the proceeds when the trees are harvested.