Illegal gold mining in Ghana’s Greater Cape Three Points Forest Reserve is damaging protected forest and sending polluted sediment and toxic chemicals into the country’s first marine protected area, conservationists said, threatening wildlife, fisheries and local farmers.
The Cape Three Points Marine Protected Area was formally inaugurated in April and covers about 700 square kilometres (270 square miles) of offshore waters. It is intended to provide a nursery for small pelagic fish and help depleted fish stocks recover.
But conservation groups say illegal mining in the adjacent 45-square-kilometre (17-square-mile) Greater Cape Three Points Forest Reserve has intensified over the past six months, after operating in the area for about three years.
Stephen Kankam, deputy director of Ghanaian environmental NGO Hεn Mpoano, said mining was releasing mercury, arsenic and cyanide into streams that eventually flow into the sea through the Nyan River.
“The destruction is phenomenal,” he said. “I mean, you cannot just imagine the kind of destruction that is ongoing. There is clearing of large swaths of the forest areas that have paved the way for digging, for excavation, and all sorts of operations within the forest.”
The pollution has also affected coastal waters, Kankam said.
He said the inshore waters had turned brown as polluted sediment entered the ocean.
“All the ecosystems that we are considering as fish habitats, like the mangrove ecosystems, the bottom or the rocky shores — all those areas where the fish stay within the near-shore environment are affected.”
The forest reserve, in Ghana’s Western Region, was once about 70% forested and is home to species including the yellow-casqued hornbill, endangered grey parrots and white-naped mangabeys, as well as critically endangered Roloway monkeys.
The reserve was described as “only lightly disturbed” in a Key Biodiversity Areas assessment a decade ago, when prospecting pits and small abandoned mines were present.
Conservationists say the situation has deteriorated sharply in recent years.
Charles Afosah, local project lead for West African Primate Conservation Action, which works with residents to patrol the reserve and restore degraded areas, said the forest had suffered extensive damage over the past year.
“Currently, I can’t say if mangabey or Roloway [monkeys] have been affected, but what has been affected more are trees,” he said. “The trees have been falling to the ground because the land has been degraded.”
Pollution threatens farms and fisheries
Communities around the reserve have also been affected because farmers use local rivers to irrigate crops, Afosah said.
“The communities are greatly affected and some of their vegetables are affected,” Afosah said. We don’t know where some of these foodstuffs in the market will land.”
Some local residents have also provided accommodation and other support to illegal miners, he said.
“But they are the same people who are giving out their rooms and other things to these illegal miners to stay in. Some of them are foreigners.”
Afosah said Ghana’s National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat, known as NAIMOS, had not maintained a sufficient presence in the reserve.
“NAIMOS is not in Cape Three Points,” Afosah said. “It has been a while. I heard NAIMOS was looking for a place or the member of parliament was collaborating with them to find an operating base for patrols.”
He also criticised the effectiveness of law enforcement after arrests made during community patrols.
“Since last year, we have made several arrests, but you arrest the person, and tomorrow, you see the person walking freely in the community.”
The degradation threatens wildlife and could also undermine plans to develop ecotourism in the area, which has beaches, an old slave castle and the newly established marine protected area, conservationists said.
Kankam said sediment from mining was being carried into mangrove ecosystems along the coast, which serve as breeding grounds for fish and crustaceans.
“If that area is blocked because there’s sand accumulation, of course, mangroves are going to die,” he said. “They are not going to thrive within these areas. ”
Calls for stronger enforcement
Kankam urged the government to transfer responsibility for the Cape Three Points reserve to the Wildlife Division of Ghana’s Forestry Commission, whose armed officers he said would be better equipped to confront illegal miners.
He also called for permanent enforcement camps to be established inside the forest.
“They will serve as a deterrent, but they will also be a mechanism to reach out to nearby areas where mining is happening, even outside the forest, so that law enforcement can reach out to these areas where mining occurs in rivers and streams that are connected to the MPA,” he said.
The conservationists’ concerns come as Ghana continues to battle illegal gold mining, locally known as galamsey, which has polluted rivers, degraded farmland and damaged forests in several parts of the country.
For Cape Three Points, conservationists say the stakes are particularly high because damage on land is now spilling into a newly protected marine ecosystem designed to help restore Ghana’s fisheries.
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