By Francis H. Murray
Five rural communities in the Bagruwa Chiefdom, Moyamba District, have commenced activities geared towards connecting three patches of forest in order to create the first corridor for wildlife species in Sierra Leone.
The communities: Mobondah, Mai, Mokombo, Yelleh and Sorbengi, have been discovered to have two secondary forests surrounded by mangroves, which will provide a home for a number of key wildlife species.
The move comes amidst worries that the communities had lost a large forest cover due to the slashing down and burning of trees for agricultural purposes and logging, a development authorities say if not stopped will ultimately threaten water security and wildlife, thereby critically endangering the Western Chimpanzees which were originally known to live in forests.
The Sierra Leone government last year declared the chimpanzee as the National Animal.
The two patches of forests identified in Moyamba - Mai-Mokombo Forest (MMF) and Yelleh-Sorbengi Forest (YSF) - have been reserved by the five communities to allow a re-growth.
The goal, according to authorities, is to create one big forest and at the same time create a space for all the animals to live and be safe in the face of human wildlife-conflicts.
With support from the management of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Freetown, ten locals were trained as Bio-monitoring technicians to effectively patrol the forests, monitor threatened species and take valuable data.
These technicians, without formal education, were also trained to install information about their patrols using cyber-tracker device and also to sensitize their surrounding communities on the importance of the forest to the establishment of a wildlife corridor.
The project, authorities add, has helped to change community perception and attitudes towards conservation, wildlife and habitat protection and the environment.
Also, information recorded by the technicians has helped to identify the reforestation of the wildlife corridor by connecting the two fragmented forest patches.
Tacugama and its partners also moved swiftly to support the community to establish a corridor connecting the two forest patches by engaging in tree planting, forest patrol and protection. The project has seen a reforestation exercise of 70,000 indigenous trees planted. These trees, when grown into a forest, will provide home to over 70 different species identified in the area.
The Paramount Chief Robert Coker, also known as Papapuwe, has been key to the project’s implementation and had named the group of chimpanzees living in the area as ‘Papapuwe’, after his father.
Women in these communities have been empowered to harvest oysters and engage in vegetable gardening as livelihood support programmes to boost local income and also to create awareness on proper resource management.
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