AOur concern for local
fauna and flora is almost non-existent. We hardly talk about how to protect
these segments of mother earth without which our existence would be terminated
eventually.
The scriptures of the two
Abrahamic faiths – Christianity and Islam – have copious references to the two
vis-a-vis our relationship to them. Unfortunately, while others in the vast
world have enforceable legislations to protect these natural endowments, ours
are but footnotes in our statutes dating back to colonial times in some cases.
It was gratifying though
to note that an international rating of our wildlife stock at the Mole Game
Reserve was impressive.
The Wildlife Division of
the Forestry Commission needs to do more to raise awareness about the importance
of protecting our wildlife stock. With little or no means of recording the
numbers to determine a declining stock, the best we can do for now is to
enforce the existing legislations and to educate the people, especially those
on the fringes of game reserves and places with high-hunting habits.
There used to be an annual
announcement about the closed season for hunting of certain species of wildlife
but even then the rural folk who do most, if not all the hunting activities,
hardly observe this legislation.
It would be appropriate to
engage our traditional authorities in our efforts to conserve our wildlife
stock. We know, for instance, that our traditional settings have days on which
hunting and fishing are debarred. There are parts of the forests too designated
off-limits for hunting, among others. These could be our ancestors’ means of
protecting wildlife against excessive hunting and hence the depletion of
nature’s endowment of fauna.
We acknowledge the efforts
of the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission to protect our wildlife
against the backdrop of the insatiable appetite by both rural and urban folks
for so-called bush meat. If only we could limit our tastes to giant rodents
like the grass-cutter whose production numbers are so vast that they are
nowhere near extinction, we would have been better off.
Last week, the Wildlife
Division announced the annual migration of elephants from their abode in the
game reserves of Burkina Faso through parts of the Upper East Region in search
of the raining season-induced lush grass in parts of the Eastern Corridor
towards Togo.
We are aware about how in
the course of the migration, farms are destroyed and sometimes lives
threatened. We must be quick to add though that the Wildlife Division personnel
have told farmers in the affected parts to steer away from farming along the
designated routes and avoid risking destruction of their farms by the mammoths.
Unfortunately, the advice
are hardly heeded hence the annual consequences befalling hard-eared farmers.
There are many countries
which derive substantial amounts of foreign exchange from their enhanced
wildlife stock through a healthy cooperation between wildlife managers and the
locals. The tourism industry stands to gain a lot when we all join hands to
protect our fauna from excessive and unsustainable hunting habits.
The ecosystem must be sustained
just how God set it to be. Undue interference by man can cause serious
consequences for our existence especially yet generations unborn when
regulations to sustain the ecosystem are ignored or not implemented.
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