THE Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has increased its efforts towards the establishment of woodlots and greening of various parts of the Tamale metropolis.
This is to protect the city from being affected by desertification, which is consuming some other parts of the Northern Region due to practices such as bush burning, incessant logging and mechanised agric.
As part of the efforts, the Tamale secretariat of the EPA has established a nursery at its premises to enable it to raise various tree seedlings to support the greening of schools, communities and offices.
So far, the office has succeeded in raising more than 10,000 seedlings, which are currently being distributed to some beneficiaries, including the University of Development Studies (UDS) and some basic schools.
Some of the tree seedlings, which are being distributed, include varieties of Cassia, Albizia, Neem, Mango, Milk Bush and Cashew.
In an interview, the Northern Regional Director of the EPA, Mr Iddrisu Abu, said the EPA had gone beyond its core mandate of being a regulatory body by playing an active role in the restoration of degraded areas.
“We decided to establish our own nursery to enable us to raise more seedlings and support the government’s drive to green Ghana ,” he stated, adding that the north had a peculiar case because of the spate of land degradation in the area.
Mr Abu said initially the EPA acquired seedlings from the Forestry Department and other bodies and then distributed them to various communities and institutions.
“But we were overwhelmed by demands for seedlings. Therefore, we had to devise a way to be able to provide these seedlings on our own and this is why we started this operational nursery,” he further mentioned.
The director expressed the hope that with such efforts, Tamale could be protected from desertification.
The EPA recently estimated that the Northern Region loses 38,000 hectares of its tree cover every year due to activities such as indiscriminate bush burning, deforestation, overgrazing by livestock and surface mining.
It said due to those practices, some parts of the region had been reduced to desert-like conditions leading to the severe reduction in food and water resources and the increased intensity and duration of droughts and disasters in the north.
The tree-planting exercise is therefore considered as a key measure towards restoring deforested areas even though it can not totally recover the state of the natural forests.
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