The Falgore Game Reserve: Another endangered asset

Some lost things can be recovered easily, others with difficulty, but once lost, some others remain gone for all time. If, for any reason, the good people of Kano State lose the Falgore Game Reserve, they will certainly lose it forever, never to be recovered, ever. All the uglier, they will lose with it not only its enormous material benefits but also much social dignity. Other Nigerians and probably, the entire world will see us for the careless people we then present ourselves to be.

As a unique gift of nature, this miniature Amazon is a treasure of inestimable value. Its dense foliage compares well to an island paradise, because it is set in the hot semi-arid Savannah vegetative zone.

Its significance and breathtaking beauty came to the early notice of the British colonialists, who, to preserve its virgin purity and ecosystem, converted it to a game reserve, giving it legal protection.

It harbours a rich variety of wildlife resources; both native plants and animals, many of them either endangered or not found elsewhere in the world.

A profuse network of more than two dozen rivers and streams supply the needed water for the support of these diverse life forms.

However, despite the new understanding which gave large forests an additional global relevance, even its local benefits seem either greatly unrecognized, underrated or taken for granted.

The Falgore Reserve has been protecting this vulnerable zone from desert encroachment. It is a protective barrier, shielding the southward advance of the Sahara Desert, said to be at the alarming rate of a football pitch every 15 seconds. Similarly, it attracts tourists, students and researchers from far and wide, an attraction that enhances its potentials as a tourist location. But even more significant, it also supports agriculture, because the water supply to the Tiga Dam derives from its river sources.

During his tenure as Governor of Kano State, the late Alhaji Audu Bako conceived of the best way to utilize those abundant water resources. He committed so much in the engineering feat that drains and collects them into the Tiga Artificial Lake. As a result of this arrangement, the forest rivers and the new lake are joined together into a single system. That is to say, whatever affects the free flow of the forest rivers will eventually also affect both its collection at the Tiga Lake and by extension its supply to the irrigated areas.

And ever since it was constructed, the lake has been supporting large scale crop production, fisheries and animal husbandry in the Kura, Bunkure and Garun Malam axis, also called the food Basket of Kano. So, millions of farmers depend on it for their means of livelihood.

Yet, it faces serious threats of total destruction.

One of those threats is poaching, the illegal hunting of its animals. This has been depopulating the hunted animals to the extent of threatening some of them with extinction. Another threat is indiscriminate logging, the felling of trees for firewood which is in high demand due to its widespread use. Sometimes the trees are felled by clearing or burning the forest for other human conveniences. To varying degrees, each of these activities disturbs the stability of the local ecosystem, destroying habitats, killing animals, blocking waterways and in the case of logging, stripping treetop vegetative cover.

But since it affects agriculture and means of livelihoods more directly, the worst threat is grazing. When cattle and sheep graze, they strip the grass cover on the topsoil, loosening it. As the exposed topsoil is being washed by rainfall, it builds up and collects as silt in the rivers, blocking them. This causes both flooding within the forest area and a reduction in the volume of water reaching the Lake. The flooding will kill some wildlife by destroying their habitats, whereas the decrease in the volume of water at the lake will threaten agriculture.

Therefore, if only to ensure the free flow of the rivers, all destructive human activities such as logging, poaching and grazing within the forest should be controlled. Also for the same reasons, the idea of settling nomadic herdsmen in the reserve should be abandoned for good. If anything, that idea only shows that our high increase in population over the past decades has increased both the demand and pressure on its resources. We must resist that dangerous temptation, because forming human settlements within the forest will only aggravate its present problems and accelerate its total decimation with disastrous repercussions on agriculture.

Instead, we should sustain the Falgore Game Reserve not so much for its wildlife, or envisioned tourism benefits or even environmental safety as for its present support of farming and livelihoods. We have to preserve it simply because it waters the farms that feed us in the Tiga irrigation zone.

Also, in order to reflect current trends, the existing, obsolete laws for the protection of wildlife should be reformed and enforced more diligently because they are ineffective deterrents.

In the alternative, the federal government should take over the Falgore Reserve and upgrade it to a national park, if the take over will prevent its loss the way we lost our groundnut pyramids and ancient city wall.

But since it affects agriculture and means of livelihoods more directly, the worst threat is grazing.