Ivory Coast is building a wall around its forest reserves to prevent civilization from encroaching on it. 10 kilometers (six miles) long wall is to run along the edge of the Banco National Park to prevent it from being swallowed up by neighboring districts.
The nature reserve Along with the Tijuca Park in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro is said to be one of just two virgin forests worldwide to have survived at the heart of a metropolis.
The nature reserve of 3,474 hectares (8,584 acres) is home to “around 30 flora species in danger of extinction in West Africa”, but “in six years, a demographic explosion and a boom in haphazard construction have pecked away” at its edges
This was said by Ivorian ecologist Tom Thalmas Lasme says the wall is crucial in a country that has lost a huge swathe of forests over the past half-century.
Those who live in the impoverished neighborhoods along its borders regularly slip in to chop down trees for firewood or hunt its fauna to eat, locals say.
And drivers speeding down the motorway on its western edge have also been known to unwittingly ravage the park.
According to locals who live around the forest, there have been several forest fires caused by motorists tossing in cigarette butts.
The country has lost up to 80 percent of its natural forests in just 50 years due to agriculture, bush fires, illegal forest exploitation and artisanal mining, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says.
There are approximately three million hectares of forests left in ivory coast, of which two million have been designated as 14 separate nature reserves and every year, a further 300,000 hectares of trees vanish.
The OIPR says it is building the barrier around the western and northern boundaries of Abidjan’s forest with government and Japanese funding to help halt the destruction. The Banco forest absorbs carbon dioxide and emits essential oxygen for Abidjan’s six million inhabitants.
