Liberia announced on Thursday the preservation of 62 000 hectares of forest land in efforts to ease sanctions and rebuild its shattered landscape after 14 years of nearly unabated war.
Legal logging has been banned under United Nations-imposed sanctions since July, amid concerns that trees were felled in an environmentally-harmful way.
Laws published on Thursday would extend the southeast’s Sapo National Park by 50 000 hectares and create the 13 500-hectare Nimba Nature Reserve, which contains four percent of the west African country’s mostly intact forest.
”The degradation of our forest is not of long standing; we had in the 1970s a forestry development authority with programs for reforestation,” said Harry Greaves, economic adviser to Gyude Bryant, a businessman appointed in mid-October to lead the country to elections in 2005.
”In the grand scheme of things, (the deforestation) is a fairly recent phenomenon and can be fixed,” added Greaves. ”And supporting environmental legislation is one of the ways to help Liberia get sanctions lifted.”
For environmental group Conservation International, the need to protect Liberian forests goes beyond responsible logging and speaks to the wealth of endemic flora and fauna.
Despite the devastation of Liberia from back-to-back civil wars that killed more than 200 000 since 1989, the country, which contains part of the Guinean forest of West Africa, remains home to half of all known African mammal species.
”This is great news for a country that has seen such uncertainty in recent years,” said CI president Russell Mittermeier in a statement from Washington. ”With a single signature, the new government has helped guarantee a secure long-term future for its citizens.”
CI, which lobbied hard for the legislation, considers Liberia a top spot for primate conservation, particularly the endangered Western Chimpanzee, whose population has declined dramatically as war and poverty have crept across west Africa. Scientists cited by CI estimate that the chimpanzee’s numbers have dropped from 600 000 to 25 000 in recent decades, with entire populations forecast to disappear within 10-20 years.
The protected areas are also home to a variety of endangered species such as the Pygmy hippopotamus, forest elephants and the Liberian mongoose.
Sporadic clashes that erupt between rebels and militias loyal to exiled former president Charles Taylor continue, however, to threaten the areas slated for environmental protection.
Nimba county in the northeast saw fighting last week that sent panicked residents fleeing — right around the area designated as the Nimba Nature Reserve on the border of a World Heritage Site in neighbouring Guinea and Ivory Coast.
”The fighting is not going to last forever,” insisted Greaves, noting it would take until January for the UN peacekeepers on the ground since October to reach full strength and help usher in a lasting peace.
”The expectation is that peace will extend beyond Monrovia,” said Greaves.
”The expectations is that people will be able to go to parks and that protecting the environment will not be a luxury.” – Sapa-AFP