The Antisua Community Forest

The Antisua Community Forest is located in the heart of the Borgou Province, in the northeastern part of Benin. The landscape is typical of the Guinea Savannah, with broad leaf woodlands, arboreal savannah, gallery systems, dense forest islets, grasslands, seasonal watercourses and hilly terrain. The flora and fauna is the most diverse in the country including species adapted to life in the more humid south as well as those adapted to the drier climate of the north. Human activities in and around the forest are mostly confined to subsistent agriculture, small-scale farming and cattle ranching. The principal cash crop of the region is cotton, while food crops are yams, maize, millet and sorghum and to a lesser extent beans and peanuts. It is estimates that 40-45% of the total land area of the Borgou is under cotton cultivation. The 12 villages bordering the Antisua Community Forest currently exploit a minimum of 2,010 ha of cotton alone. This land is burned and stripped of most tree cover, then farmed until the soil is spent and finally left fallow in a state of acquired grassland while new farmable territory is sought elsewhere. Besides unsustainable agricultural practices, bush fires, communal hunting, poaching and timber harvesting pose serious threats to natural systems. The Antisua Forest Regional Council (CRFA) seeks financing to help the organisation mobilise local stakeholders to tackle this problem by protecting and restoring the Antisua Community Forest, a 6,000 ha nature reserve formed from lands donated by ten partner villages. Activities of the project include an environmental education program at local schools; sapling production in community tree nurseries; reforestation of degraded terrain; low fuel-consuming stove construction, soy cultivation and transformation with women’s and youth groups; introducing farmers to the basic concepts of apiculture; inaugurating a regional association for the Peuhl-Gando community; and outreach to new villages not yet involved in the project. Results from these activities will be increased understanding of the importance of natural resource protection; production of thousands of saplings of indigenous species; reforestation of dozens of hectares of degraded terrain; less wood used in food production; restoration of spent fields through soy cultivation; ameliorated nutritional regimes with the inclusion of soy in the local diet; forest protection and income generation through bee keeping; an active Peuhl-Gando association concentrating on the role to be played in managing the reserve, and other activities; the inclusion of more villages and thus more land in the reserve system; mobilisation of stakeholders and idea exchange between stakeholder groups, leading to better regional and cross-cultural co-operation.

This initial Antisua Community Forest project started on January 1st 2005, but was interrupted four months later.