Freetown, Sierra Leone

Thursday, July 03, 2025

In the heart of a national park and supposedly protected rainforest near Freetown, Aminata Sankoh, a widow and mother of seven, is about to set fire to dozens of logs to produce charcoal, one of the illegal activities dramatically threatening this country already highly vulnerable to global warming.

Opposite her, Caesar Senesie, head of a unit of villagers deployed to monitor their forests, an unprecedented initiative, cries out: “You say it doesn’t affect you, that the trees will be replanted, but this deforestation, it’s your great-grandchildren who will pay the price!”

As far as the eye can see, the scale of this deforestation in the precious tropical rainforest and in what remains of primary forest is edifying, as it is in the whole area of the Peninsula National Park in the western region bordering the capital Freetown.

The park is also being deforested by marijuana plantations – the country is plagued by drug problems – and land grabbing due to demographic pressure.

Of the park’s 18,000 hectares of forest, almost a third (5,600 hectares) has been lost or seriously degraded since 2012.

The park is undergoing “intensive deforestation: 715 hectares – the equivalent of 1,330 soccer pitches – have disappeared or been seriously degraded” in 2024, warns the World Food Programme (WFP). Yet it is home to 80-90% of Sierra Leone’s biodiversity, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Sierra Leone is also the 11th most vulnerable country in the world to climate change, according to the Notre-Dame Global Adaptation Index.

You have to go deep into the park and mountains to find the illegal charcoal-making sites, a cheap fuel that is the only way for many Sierra Leoneans to cook in the face of power cuts and high energy prices.

An AFP team was exceptionally able to visit these sites.

– Survival –

Groups of men toil away in the 35°C heat. Tree trunks are piled up, covered with stones, consumed for days and nights.

Near Aminata Sankoh, a millstone several meters across begins to smoke. For her, as for the other people on the site, all very poor, this is a survival activity.

With exhausted features, 45-year-old Mrs. Sankoh recalls the death of her husband four years ago. To feed her children and pay school fees, she had to take up an informal trade: breaking stones in the building trade.

“It had become too hard… I decided to come to the forest to make charcoal”, two years ago, she recounts. “I have no other choice…”

Faced with the lack of protection against these activities and against fires to deforest and monopolize the land, units of around forty volunteer villagers have been mobilized.

“Even at night, if a fire breaks out, I call my guys and we go,” says Caesar Senesie. “We’ve been given tools and boots, and we use them to contain the fire.”

The initiative is being led by the NGO Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA), which has been commissioned by the government and the United Nations Development Programme to restore 2,000 hectares in the park over the past year and until 2028.

“People continue these illegal activities because they think they can do so with impunity”, laments Tommy Garnett, renowned activist and founder of EFA. He points to “poverty, ignorance and greed”, adding: “The whole situation is leading to the destruction of our environmental heritage at an alarming rate…”

– Massive deforestation –

Faced with the inefficiency and alleged corruption of some of the forest rangers who, under-equipped and underpaid, sometimes turn a blind eye, the EFA is betting on involving the communities who are the first to suffer from this deforestation.

…

“Since February 7, we’ve been paying these villagers to patrol the forest on a daily basis. We’ve learned so much more in the last few months about what’s going on in the forest than we have in the 10 years these rangers have been patrolling…” notes Tommy Garnett.

The NGO has also replanted 103,000 trees in the last year, with a target of 500,000 more by 2028.

Volunteers make reports, collect evidence and photographs that enable the authorities to organize raids.

“We, the villagers, are the solution to protect the forest,” assures Caesar Senesie, gazing up at the emerald-green canopies high in the mountains.

Ten kilometers away, a second unit of villagers, ulcerated by the forest going up in smoke in their Mile 13 locality, is taking part in the project, led by Sulaiman Barrie.

Behind him, the fire is still smouldering: twice at the end of April, individuals started fires. “We’re here in a protected area where many animals live,” he laments.

Savana Beah, 22, joined the group of volunteers in February. “When I was a child, we used to come here to pick mangoes. Now the area is almost totally deforested…” she laments.

“We patrol every night,” she says. “I have to help protect my community and my forest.

Tamba Dauda, a senior official at the Ministry of Lands, says he is “aware of the massive deforestation” in this region. He points to the opaque land allocation practices of previous authorities, and highlights the government’s efforts to pass tougher laws and set up a police unit specializing in land crimes.

For his part, Joseph Rahall, environmental expert and founder of the NGO Green Scenery, is categorical: “We’ve gone beyond the emergency stage…”.

“At the rate at which deforestation is taking place, and if we don’t better manage this region of the Western Peninsula, in 10 to 15 years there won’t be any forest left”, he asserts.

Humaniterre with AFP