7. Forest Management

Prior to the designation of the Department of Forestry in 1976, the then forestry unit under the Department of Agriculture concentrated only on the protection of the natural forest and the establishment of plantations.

With the creation of the Department, and the subsequent enactment of the subsection's first policy and legislation in 1976 and 1978 respectively, the young forestry service focus its attention on: -

- Law enforcement

- Issuing and control of forest exploitation licenses

- Collection of royalties

- Conservation, protection and development of forest parks (gazetted forests)

- Continuation of plantation and woodlot establishment for the domestic supply of wood products (especially fuelwood) to reduce pressure on the natural forests.

The efforts in plantation and woodlot development to supply wood products and to improve the status quo of the natural resources could not be successfully achieved as desired. This was due to the high demand on forest resources, the frequency of uncontrolled bush fire and the high cost of plantation development. Furthermore, the predicted rate of forest destruction (about 5 -6% annually), has been faster than both the establishment rate of plantations and the development of a more efficient forestry extension service for the effective and sustainable management of forest resources.

Among the most common tree species planted both exotic and indigenous, there are only two exotic species, Azadirachta indica Eucalyptus camaludensis var. which over the past decades seem not to be affected by climatic changes, nor are they attractive to domestic and wild animals, and they re-sprout even after serious fire hazards. At least under present conditions, these species can be propagated with minimal investments and minimal risk of failure. However, taking into account that the use of these species is limited and that their increasing abundance may adversely affect agricultural production as well as the biodiversity in plant and animal population. Due to the ability to suppress natural vegetation, the further propagation of the Neem tree should be limited to the North bank of the country.

Even though there was no formal policy review, all attempts were made to shift and concentrate the administration's attention and efforts on managing the natural forests while plantation operations continued to be limited to management of existing ones.

Through such intervention and the bilateral support from the Federal Republic of Germany through GTZ, seven of the sixty-six gazetted forest parks were successfully managed through protection against the annual bush fires and through enrichment planting

The experiences gained in the management of natural forests since the existence of the Gambian-German Forestry Project (GGFP) within the Forestry service in 1980, were used to develop a natural forest management model called "The Gambian Forest Management Concept (GFMC)". The concept is an approach to conserve and improve the forest resources of The Gambia in order to supply as much of the country’s demand for forest products as possible through sustainable management. The concept is an integrated approach based on the following strategies:

i) to obtain and maintain a diversified structure in executing and implementing forest management activities;

ii) to increase the awareness of individuals, communities and the Gambian population on the importance of forests;

iii) to conserve the existing forest areas (or what will be defined as permanent forests by the National Forest Land Use Plan):

iv) to manage these forests according to the principles of natural forest management in a sustainable, ecologically adapted and socially acceptable way;

v) to minimise the cost of management and conservation by using the resource’s capacity of self-regeneration and to improve its production capacity with a minimum of silvicultural inputs;

vi) to hand over responsibility and management functions to communities and other managers in order to minimise government input in terms of man-power and finance;

Due to the limitations of the first policy objectives and the 1978 forest legislation for the realisation of the GFMC which aims at the sustainable and cost effective management of the natural forest resources, a policy and legislation review were undertaken in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

The new policy (1995 - 2005) aims at maintaining 30% of the total land area under forest cover and to manage at least 75% of this area. The anticipated areas of managed forests as it relates to total land area per administrative zone (divisions) is given in table 10.

Table 10: Total planned management forest area per division 1995 - 2005

Source: Danso A. 1998

The current policy targets an area of 200,000 ha of state forestland to be under community forest management by the year 2005. The potential community forest areas as compared to forest parks can be deduced from table 11.

Table 11: Forest parks and potential community forest areas

Source: National Forest Inventory, 1983; Forestry Department/GGFP Project proposal

The present forestry policy succeeded also in creating a National Forestry Fund (NFF) effective 1996, which mandates the Forestry Department to retain 50% of all revenues generated in any fiscal year for financing of forest management operations in addition to government budgetary allocations. However, the availability of such additional fund, could only improve the recurrent cost situation as it could not at the current level of revenue off-take, meet the need for staff training and development investment.

In line with the policy, the FD proposed relevant strategic issues as the National Forest Action Plan (NFAP). The finalisation of NFAP was scheduled for 1997 but got stocked. Nevertheless, a considerable achievement have been made in implementing major strategic issues such as legislation review, the second national forest inventory, community forestry expansion and awareness creation, and forest park management. Based on the NFAP, box 1 entails the major strategies of the FD.

Box 1: Institutional strategies for sustainable forest management