The Africa Nature Investors (ANI) Foundation has identified Illegal mining and grazing as the biggest threat to the Gashaka Gumti National Park.
Citizenship Daily reports that Gashaka Gumti National Park, located in Taraba and Adamawa States, is Nigeria’s largest national park and is also one of the richest national parks in Africa in terms of biodiversity.
Dr. David Peter, Deputy Project Manager of ANI Foundation, made this known during a programme for women in Toungo Local Government Area of Adamawa state, where the foundation and ROSHAN Renewables Ltd. celebrated the success of the savings and loans initiative for women.
According to Peter, the scheme, which led to the empowerment of over 450 women, was designed to improve livelihoods of households and reduce the dependence of local communities on the national park’s resources.
“The challenges we are facing in the park are regarding illegal mining and grazing, because these are the biggest threats to this Gashaka Gumti National Park and we have been calling on the stakeholders, political leaders and the government to support us in this mission so that these illegal activities will not push this park down.
“At the moment, I would say this is the best national park in Africa. In Nigeria, it’s the largest national park, so allowing this park to just go like this is not only going to affect Taraba and Adamawa States which the park is located but it’s going to affect the world entirely.
“Any insecurity that will affect this park will affect the nation, that’s why, when we started working in this park in collaboration with the National Park Service, we ensured that the stakeholders, the communities, the political leaders and the government at all levels keyed into the project. They are the people that will help us to revive this park,” he said.
Speaking on successes recorded so far, Dr Peter said that the park has engaged women and youths in so many activities such as bee keeping, saving and loan groups, vaccination of cows, building of schools, rural electrification, among others.
“We have recorded success even here in Toungo Local Government, which is the Adamawa sector, we have empowered more than 450 women directly through the saving and loan groups, we do bee keeping farming where we have more than 50 farmers across all the communities surrounding the park in both sectors. We also have farmers across the support zone communities that have been empowered with seedlings to improve further. We have done cattle vaccination, which led to the vaccination of over 100,000 cattle across the the park.
“We have erected buildings in government schools, constructed new blocks of classrooms and currently have more than 50 students from our scholarship board and we plan to achieve more in the months and years ahead,” he said.
In line with this, the foundation and ROSHAN Renewable called on the government and other stakeholders to support their efforts to protect the Gashaka Gumti National Park and promote sustainable development in the region.
Dr David Peter
