Abstract
IT is interesting to note in recent annual forestry reports how what may be termed a correct and long-sighted forest policy is gradually becoming recognized by the civil administration as a matter which can no longer be left to chance. This has recently been exemplified in NATURE. In the Gold Coast annual report (1938–39, Govt. Printer, Accra, 1939) the Conservator, in discussing the history of the forests, says that though some thirty-one years ago the indirect value of the maintenance of a proportion of tropical lands under forest was clearly stressed, yet the progress of reserving forests for the use of future generations, the maintenance of soil fertility, and so forth, has not proved an easy task. Forests, of necessity, occupy land, he says; and difficulties are increased when all the land, although surplus to immediate wants, is owned by a community with an unawakened national sense; to the indivividuals the cash resulting from an immediate sale is much to be preferred to the somewhat abstruse prospects from reservation in favour of future generations or a possible improvement in their water supplies. The failure to press for a more, rapid selection of forests for reserves when surplus land was plentiful has resulted in an increasing opposition which education and propaganda are only gradually lessening; while the remaining forests of the Colony can no longer be regarded as excessive if the happiness and health of the community are to be assured.
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Forestry in Africa. Nature 147, 63 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147063a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147063a0