Forests dwindling in the south

The office for environmental protection and natural resources development in the Bale Zone of southern Ethiopia has disclosed that as many as 23,000 hectares of forest land in the zone are being destroyed every year. The office's team leader, Ashebir Zewde, told the pro-government Walta Information Centre that a little over 1.75 million hectares of forest remained in Bale Zone, famed for its dense indigenous forest cover. He said as little as 468 hectares were being reafforested each year, expressing fear that the zone would soon be barren. If deforestation continues at current rates, the forest will be completely destroyed in less than a decade.

"I am extremely worried about the rate of deforestation," a local expert told IRIN. "The problem of deforestation is not clearly understood, and there is no forest policy in this country." He said that a total of 300,000 hectares of forest were destroyed in Ethiopia last year alone. Human activities were responsible for the vast majority of tree-loss, as a growing population tried to carve out ever more land for subsistence agriculture. Most of the forests had been destroyed by fire, he said, by peasants clearing land for cultivation, while fires started by honey hunters burned out of control. He warned that unless action was taken to check the exploitation of forest land it might soon be too late. "By the time we wake up to the problem, all the forests will be gone."