Ghanaians have been urged to embrace the Green Ghana Initiative and participate in the tree planting process to restore degraded forest reserves and mitigate the reality of climate change impacts.
Mr Atintan Azumah, Bolgatanga Assistant District Manager, Forestry Commission, noted that climate change was real and affected agriculture production and food security and there was the need to support re-greening strategies to reverse the trend.
“Climate change has no boundary even if you are here in Ghana and somebody is in America because the trees that can mitigate it is for everybody.
“For instance, we used to have rains and start cropping by April, but we are in June and some places have not still had rains and all these are due to climate change,” he said.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga ahead of the commemoration of Green Ghana Project, Mr Azumah appealed to Ghanaians to support the project to plant trees to re-green the environment to address the erratic rainfall pattern for sustainable agriculture production.
Last year, the Bolgatanga District Forestry Commission which comprised Bolgatanga Municipal, Bolgatanga East, Nabdam, Bongo and Talensi Districts distributed and planted 100,000 tree seedlings.
Mr Azumah noted that the survival rate was high and called for collective efforts to consolidate the gains made.
He said the forest reserves at Nangodi, Bongo, Kalbeo and Anateem were fast depleting due to human illegal human activities including felling of trees for fuel firewood and farming activities and there was the need to replace the lost vegetation cover.
He revealed that about 140,000 seedlings out of the 200,000 seedlings to be planted this year would be planted at the forest reserves to help restore the degraded landscapes and forest reserves.
“This year, we want to target majority of the seedlings to go to the forest reserves because people who collected the seedlings last year complained that they died, so we want to plant majority there and also observe ourselves.
“So, we have demarcated 128 compartments in the Nangodi forest reserves and it will take about 140,000 seedlings, while the rest will be given to individuals or corporate bodies who want them,” he added.
Mr Azumah mentioned Cassia siamea, Terminala montalis, Neem, Cashew, Mahogany, Eucalyptus, Abezia labbeck, Teak, Ceiba pentandra (kapok) and Bauhinia refescens as some of the tree species in stock and appealed to individuals and groups to visit the office to collect the seedlings free of charge.
By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
