Photo retrieved from: www.reuters.com
“Sierra Leone is one of a number of African countries where deforestation is impacting water supply.
“WATER LOST”
Although the house building on Leicester Peak is outside the main water catchment area of Freetown’s main dam, officials worry it sets a precedent that protected forest can be cut.
“Our efforts have not yielded much fruit,” said Samuel Serry, Sierra Leone forests and agriculture ministry spokesman.
“There is a serious problem enforcing the regulations.”
In Moseh, a village on a peninsula south of Freetown, village chief Foday Koroma said water supplies were getting more irregular and local people were carrying water in jerrycans.
On a continent where rain often buckets down then dries up, trees help moderate the cycle, by slowing run-off and soaking up precipitation to be released later.
“When you take forest off, all (the water) comes off in the wet season,” said Richard Harding, of the UK-based Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. “It will all be lost … out to sea.”
Only 40 percent of a protected forest of 17,482 hectares (43,199 acres) on a peninsula south of Freetown is left, yet a fifth of the nation’s six million people depend on it for water.”
Read more: Reuters
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