Accra, March 30, GNA – Trees planted under the 2022 Green Ghana Project in some Forest Reserves in the Greater Accra Region have recorded a 74 per cent survival rate.
Madam Winifred Ohene-Wiafe, District Manager, Tema – Ada Forest District, says: “The survival rate generally within the Reserve is about 74 per cent but varies specifically for the compartments that we have.”
She said this when some technocrats from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the Forestry Commission paid a working visit to the Reserve to ascertain the growth of the trees.
The Reserve which is made up of two compartments: compartments 57 and 63, with a land mass of 32 hectares equivalent to about 2, 400 football pitches is said to be on a coastal savannah land.
Madam Ohene-Wiafe in an interview with the Media said compartment 57 which had 5, 500 trees planted on 5 hectares of its land had an 85 per cent survival rate while compartment 63 with the same number of trees and size land had below 80 per cent.
“The shortfall or difference between the survival rates is attributed to inadequate rainfall and on several occasions, the Commission had to be giving them water periodically which was not sustainable,” she said.
In compartment 57, three species of trees Acacia, Mahogany and Cassia in collaboration with Total Energies whilst Karpower together with officials of the Commission planted the same species.
The team also visited the Shai Hills Resources Reserve which has an area of 51km2 of vegetation which is purely grassland.
Indigenous species like Mahogany had been planted on a 3km stretch of the land as part of the Green Ghana Project.
The Green Ghana project 2022 had two modules where 10 million trees were to be planted in Forest Reserves and another 10 million trees planted outside the Reserves.
Mr Joseph Osiakwan, Technical Director, Forestry, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, said:
“Companies like the Karpower or the Total Energies are into carbon related activities. They create a lot of carbons and they have to offset their carbon footprints by planting tree somewhere so that it would take the carbon dioxide out.”
He said we needed to increase the tree stock in the forest, especially in the Greater Accra Region, where there are factories and a large number of cars producing carbon monoxide from their exhaust.
GNA