Community - Based Forest Management In Buru, Taraba State, Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) in partnership with Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) mounted a 5-year (2005-2010) Participatory Forest Management Project in Buru community, a remote rural village in Kurmi Local Government of Taraba State, Nigeria.

The project was implemented through a series of environmental awareness campaigns, training workshops, lectures, seminars, stakeholder meetings and adult literacy programmes woven around three themes: Forest Governance, Improved livelihoods, Forest Patrol and Monitoring. The project established a working governance structure that ensured of all stakeholders including women to achieve the objectives of the project. Since inception, no commercial logging has occurred in Buru community forest while poaching has dramatically reduced. In some cases the patrol group had intercepted lorries carrying logs from surrounding forests and handed culprits over to the police for prosecution. The patrol group had been collecting data from forests about plant phenology and sighted animals. In one case they saw a dead bird that migrated from Finland to the forest. All participants recorded recorded improved livelihoods through increased household income from harvesting processing and selling forest products. Gender issues were taken care of as over 40% of the participants were women. This forest management model is recommended to Governments to  adopt it as a state forestry policy and staff should be trained to monitor the programmes and ensure compliance with the agreed management plans.

Keywords: Nigeria, Buru, Community-based forest management, Conservation, Nigeria