3000 Hectares Degraded Asubima Reserve Replanted
About 3,000 hectares of the degraded Asubima Forest Reserve at Akomadan in the Offinso South District in the Ashanti Region has been replanted with teak and indigenous species under a project initiated by Form Ghana, a forest plantation company.
With the objective of planting at least 600 hectares a year, Form Ghana had projected to cover about 20,000 hectares of degraded forests by the end of the project.
The Managing Director (MD) of Form Ghana, Mr William Fourie, made this known when The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Gerard Duijfjes, and the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Henry Ford Kamel, paid a joint familiarisation tour of the project site on Tuesday.
Form Ghana, a subsidiary of Form International and supported by The Netherlands Government, has also established a large nursery and employed about 500 Ghanaians on the project.
The project has adopted the intercropping system where farmers are allowed to plant their food or cash crops such as maize, tomatoes, groundnuts and yams alongside the tree species planted by the company.
Briefing the visitors after the tour of the company’s plantation and nurseries, Mr Fourie said Form Ghana had established a close collaboration with traditional land owners, farmers and the local population so that the plantation development programme could be beneficial to the local stakeholders.
He said measures had also been put in place to ensure sound ecological and environmental standards to ensure that the plantation project had a positive impact on the environment.
Mr Fourie said the company was working in close collaboration with the Forestry Commission (FC) to maintain standards.
Mr Kamel noted that the reforestation project was a good example of the global programme on mitigating the effects of climate change and underscored the government’s determination to build on the successes achieved in the National Reforestation Project, which had so far given employment to about 28,000 people.
He assured the private sector of continuous government support in reclaiming Ghana’s lost forests.
For his part, Mr Duijfjes disclosed that about 25 million Euro had been sunk into the reforestation project.
He expressed happiness that the government of Ghana had made plantation and rural development part of its top priorities.