Golungo Alto - The indiscriminate felling of trees for the manufacture of wood is contributing to the devastation of the Golungo Alto Forest Reserve, Cuanza-Norte province.
The complaint was made this Wednesday by the municipal administrator of Golungo Alto, Maria Inácio Jerónimo, at the workshop on 'Environmental Education', promoted by the Provincial Office of the Environment, Waste Management and Community Services.
According to the administrator, this human action is also causing climate change in the region, causing an increase in ambient temperature.
'Every day, two to five trucks full of carved wood leave the municipality, heading to the country's capital (Luanda),' she highlighted.
She said that companies or citizens who harvest wood do not leave any compensation resulting from the activity to the municipality.
She pointed to the Cerca commune as the location with the highest number of illegal logging operators, revealing that, recently, a caravan of more than 12 trucks full of cut wood was found.
In addition to the rampant cutting of trees for wood production, the administrator also pointed to the manufacture of cooking charcoal and poaching as other problems affecting the municipality.
Maria Inácio defended greater criminal liability and awareness of perpetrators by State bodies, considering the preservation of the environment as everyone's task, where environmental education constitutes a necessary and modifying instrument.
Environmental education, she continued, works to improve man's relationship with nature, promoting reflections on environmental problems.
'This forest reserve needs to be conserved and preserved, because year after year it loses its beauty and richness due to human action', she warned, stressing that the Golungo Alto Forest Reserve constitutes a true nursery of plant and animal species.
In turn, the head of the Provincial Department of the Forestry Development Institute (IDF) in Cuanza Norte, Simão Jorge, said that his institution currently has six inspectors for the 10 municipalities in the province, an insufficient number for inspection actions.
This situation, he said, has limited the institution's inspection action at the Nzenza do Itombe border post (between Luanda and Cuanza-Norte) and in Cambambe.
He reported that during 2023, 16 loggers were licensed in the province, of which two were for the municipality of Golungo Alto.
The workshop analyzed the themes “Poaching”, “Anarchic burning”, “Deforestation”, “Forest repopulation”, among others.
The Golungo Alto Forest Reserve, with an area of 558 square kilometers, is the habitat of many medicinal plants and several trees.
There are several animal species such as paçaças, hippos, roe deer, hares, elephants, lions, jaguars, wolves, hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, wild chickens and partridges.
In 2014, the Golungo Alto Forest Reserve was registered in the protected area category, in the competition to determine the seven wonders of Angola.EFM/IMA/ASS/DOJ
