Niger State Ministry of Environment and Forestry says it has begun repopulating its depleted 98 forest reserves in the state.

In an interview on Saturday, the ministry’s permanent secretary, Lucky Barau, noted that before now, the state had more than 100 forest reserves but had reduced to 98, owing to indiscriminate felling of unapproved trees by unlicensed persons for timber and firewoods.

He said the remaining 98 forest reserves were not spared from the activities of deforestation, hence government policy to protect the forests by criminalising indiscriminate felling of trees.

The permanent secretary also said the government introduced reforestation to repopulate the depleted reserves.

“The Niger State Government reached out to some international organisations. Luckily the UN-Habitat and South Korean government intervened with a project for urban reforestation,” he said.

He explained that the project would involve 50 hectares of land, out of which 45 hectares would be located at Bosso Dam for water shade management.

Mr Barau said the remaining five hectares would be spread in 10 selected schools across the state, which would establish green clubs to manage the trees and also learn about forestry.

He said the partners would finance the project, bringing economic and environmental benefits to the state as economic trees would be planted to protect the dam.

The permanent secretary hinted that the project would be completed before the end of the year.

Mr Barau disclosed that the federal government also came up with two intervention projects of reforestation on 10 hectares of land in the state to protect the environment.

“The projects will involve planting of forest and herbal trees,” he said.

He said two years ago, the state received one million tree seedlings from the Forest Research Institute at Ibadan to help it repopulate its depleted forest reserves.

The permanent secretary said the government had established a nursery for reforestation of forest reserves at a reduced cost, using the green guards.

“I can assure you that today, we have raised over one million seedlings of different species in the nursery,” he said.

On Wednesday, the state governor, Abubakar Bello, cautioned residents against the indiscriminate felling of trees while inaugurating the planting of 10 million shea butter trees in the Bosso area of the state.

Mr Bello reminded the people that the government had enacted a law prohibiting the felling of any economic tree in the state without approval.

(NAN)