‘Tree felling, bush burning expose mankind to dangers’

This was the view expressed by directors of National Orientation Agency (NOA) in Cross River State, Ms Florence Osang and Mrs Asibong Bassey, State Director, Federal Ministry of Agriculture at the ‘Environmental Sustainability’ campaign organised by NOA.
The top civil servants and other stakeholders in the environmental sector, seriously cautioned against what they called ‘twin evils’ impacting against forest conservation in Cross River State.
Chaired by  Mr Edet Okon-Asim, former commissioner for information, Osang said that the programme was organised to enlighten the people on the need to preserve and beautify the environment.
She said that deforestation was capable of leading to forest decline and degradation, hence the need to replace any tree that is cut off.
“We should endeavour to replace the trees that we cut down to avert deforestation; and we should also ensure that we don’t burn our bushes or dump our refuse in drainages.
“We should love and nurture our environment; we should also learn how to preserve it, because bush burning reduces the nutrient and manure in our farm lands and this may lead to desertification.
“We choose to organise this event now because we still have the rain, we need to educate residents on the need to stop dumping their refuse in drainages to avoid flooding,’’ she also said.
Mrs Asibong Bassey enumerated the natural causes of deforestation to include, strong wind, natural death, disease, very high and low temperatures among others.
Bassey explained that even trees can be affected by diseases especially in the tropical forests and these do lead  to death of many other trees.
She added that some trees die naturally due to insufficient nutrient and attack by insects and fungi.
She advised government to set up skill acquisition centres to empower the youth in order to reduce the pressure on deforestation.