Protect biodiversity, Forestry Institute charges environmental stakeholders

The Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN) Ibadan, has called on stakeholders in the environmental sector to gear up action in protecting biodiversity in the face of encroaching infrastructural projects across the country.

The call was made during a lecture organized by FRIN to mark the 2023 International Day of Biological Diversity held on Monday in Ibadan, Oyo State.

The Guest Speaker; Prof. Gbolagade Lameed of the Department of Wildlife and Ecotourism Department, University of Ibadan, spoke on the urgency of building back biodiversity in a bid to protect the degrading ecosystem.

The guest lecturer also spoke on the need to cultivate fast growing trees which he classified as indigenous that can be found in tropical regions and the exotic ones which are non tropical as one of the many individual efforts which can be embarked upon to protect biodiversity.

According to him, these biologically valuable trees like triplocyton, teak, Melina aboria among others grow within few years but have great advantage to the ecosystem.

Speaking with Daily Trust correspondent after the lecture, Prof. Oladapo Akinyemi, Director of Research, FRIN said that balancing biodiversity and the country’s infrastructural development is an easy task just as practiced in Europe.

“We can balance the biodiversity, the biomass and everything including the development of the country. If you go to Europe, you will see that there is always infrastructural development and they are also conserving the forest. But in our clime here, people are not mindful of the existence of the forest whereas they benefit immensely from it. Yet, regeneration or replanting becomes a big problem.

“Balancing the ecosystem is very important because failure to do so could mean unfavorable challenges which we are already facing now, like deforestation and pollution. These causes environmental problems in the world which leads to climate change and this is the time for action,” he said.

According to the Director, every stakeholder is culpable because the government both at the federal and state level have their problems, there is corruption among officials in charge of the forests, just as individuals are not doing enough in terms of regeneration.

The programme’s facilitator, Prof. Mrs. Morenike Ojo, who is also the Director, Elizabeth Ehi-Ebiewele International Biodiversity Linkage Centre, while appreciating the large turnout of participants, emphasized on the need to empower people through wealth creation and training on vocational skills to ensure that they are able to scale through poverty which is the major reason why the poor and less privileged members of the society infringe on environmental and forestry laws.