Africa-Press – Tanzania. SEVERAL studies globally have painted a picture where human beings have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s remaining wilderness in the last 25 years, and there may be none left within a century if the trend continues in our lifetime.
Again, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Professor Noah Sitati in a study on the Southern Kenya-Northern Tanzania (SOKNOT) Integrated Transboundary Wildlife Corridor, recently said that almost 60 per cent of wildlife corridors along the Tanzania-Kenya have disappeared, attributing the same scourge to human encroachments and human related activities in the areas.
“If this is unchecked, we could possibly be staring at stealth extinction of wildlife species, poor yields as a result of crop damage and Injuries and death of humans,” warned Prof Sitati.
The list might be long including the uncompromising effects of the climate change being discussed by African leaders alongside international delegates at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Narrowing this home, on 28th June last year, an alarm to the public was sounded on the effect that Blackwood and African mahogany trees are on the verge of extinction, attributing the threat to the public on over-dependency on forest products.
Speaking in Dodoma in May, this year during a meeting that embraced professionals from Tanzania Forest Services (TFS), Agency and other stakeholders from public and private sectors, Mr Deosdedit Bwoyo, who represented the director of Forestry and Fisheries, said population growth was also behind the phenomenon.
The expert in forestry told participants, including individuals engaging in carpentry and furniture trade, that it was high time they turned to other alternative trees such as teaks.
“Tanzanians are very fond of using Blackwood and African mahogany trees but it takes over 70 years for the former to grow, and we have not put in place a good plan to preserve these trees that are now diminishing. We must take deliberate action,” said Mr Bwoyo.
Without any policies to protect these areas, it is unfortunate that despite being strongholds for imperiled biodiversity, regulating local climates, and sustaining many indigenous communities, wilderness areas are vanishing before our eyes, yet they are also homes to various wildlife populations of gorillas and chimpanzees among other animals, we shall have no places to protect the animals, which also earn the country some foreign exchange.
As people living close to these forests, everyone should be acquainted with forest policies, which emphasize sustainable management and utilization of forest products in the sense that all trees must benefit Tanzanians of the coming generations too.
We must take action so that these forests, their plants and animals and as human beings, who depend on them, continue to live. Deforestation is in fact considered the second major driver of climate change (more than the entire global transport sector), responsible for 18-25% of global annual carbon dioxide emissions.
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