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Nigeria Forestry
Nigeria's forests can be divided into two principal
categories: woodlands and forests of the savanna regions
(fourfifths of the country's forest area) that are sources of
fuel and
poles, and rainforests of the southern humid zone that
supply
almost all domestic timber and lumber, with fuelwood as a
byproduct. Nigeria's forests have gradually shrunk over
the
centuries, especially in the north, where uncontrolled
commercial
exploitation of privately owned forests began in the late
nineteenth century. Toward the end of the 1800s, the
colonial
government began establishing forest reserves. By 1900
more than
970 square kilometers had been set aside. By 1930 this
reserve
had grown to almost 30,000 square kilometers, and by 1970
to
93,420 square kilometers, mostly in the savanna regions.
Through the 1950s, forest regeneration was largely by
natural
reseeding, although the government established some small
plantations near larger towns for fuelwood and poles. In
the
early 1960s, the government began emphasizing the
development of
forest plantations, especially ones planted with
fast-growing,
exotic species, such as teak and gmelina (an Australian
hardwood). By 1976 about 115,000 hectares had been
planted.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, state plantations became
an
important source of timber, paper pulp, poles, and
fuelwood.
Despite these developments, forestry's share of Nigeria's
expanding GDP declined from 6 percent in the late 1950s to
2
percent in the late 1970s and 1980s. Earnings from the
export of
timber and wood products--6 percent of export income in
1960--
declined to 1 percent of export income in 1970 and
virtually
nothing in the late 1970s and 1980s, as domestic needs
increased
rapidly. The oil boom of the 1970s slowed exports further,
as
more and more wood was diverted to the domestic
construction
industry.
In the 1980s, Nigeria's demand for commercial wood
products
(excluding paper pulp and paper) threatened to exhaust
reserves
before the year 2000. To reverse this process, especially
in the
northern savanna, the government needed to double the rate
of
annual plantings it set in the 1980s. In June 1989, the
government announced receipt of a World Bank loan for
afforestation to stabilize wood product output and forest
reserves.
Data as of June 1991
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