By Okechukwu Onuegbu
Anambra State government has said it has started mobilising communities, human and other material resources to reclaim over a thousand active erosion sites in the state.
The State Director, Anambra State Erosion, Watershed and Climate Change Agency, Professor Phil. O. Phil Eze, disclosed this at a one day sensitisation workshop on ecosystem restoration organised at Awka by the Department of Forestry and Wildlife, state Ministry of Environment under the theme, forests and livelihood sustaining people and planet.
Eze, who asserted that humans would not exist if there was no forestry, regretted that Anambra State was fast loosing forests to deforestation and gullies, and urged people to embark on afforestation.
"Our people kill without trying to replant trees. We should he sustainable on the way we handle the forest. Forest should be harvested in a programme manner. There should be an ecological balance, an annual allowance, and annual cutting cycle.
" If we cut as we like, there could problem. Anambra is fast losing forest in Nigeria. We have lost 24%. Federal government is planting 20 million trees, Anambra is planting 4 million. Every individual should make out time to plant as many trees as possible," he noted.
Delivering a lecture, Professor Peter Nnabude, noted that government has the right to reserve and maintain some lands to avoid encroaching on waterways and other natural reserves, even as he urged residents to conserve the nature as human lives depend on environmental variables to survive.
Another speaker, Mr John Agbo Ogbodo of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, identified some areas where people degrade ecosystems to include deforestation, loss of animal and plant species, greenhouse gases emissions, flooding and others.
Earlier, the Commissioner for Environment, Engineer Felix Odumegwu, described the theme of the event as timely, noting that forests were the lungs of the earth that purified the atmosphere and give out fresh air for people survival.
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