African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 5 (5), pp. 429-433, 1 March 2006   

ISSN 1684–5315 © 2006 Academic Journals        

Full Length Research Paper

Evaluation of forest policy in Nigeria: A case study of Edo state

Kalu, C.* and Izekor, D. N.

Department of Forestry and Wildlife, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.

*Correspondence author.  E-mail: ranoiteg@yahoo.com.

Accepted 10 October, 2005

The research was undertaken from 1997-2000 to investigate how forest policy has faired in meeting the set objectives in forestry contexts and development in study area. The result showed that deforestation and consolidation of forest reserves accounted for 73.64 and 3.10%, respectively. The result also revealed that there was significant difference in the participation of professional foresters and taskforce as well as regeneration and exploitation of forest resources (P<0.05). It also revealed that there were significant differences among the threats to forest protection (P<0.05) and further analysis with LSD identified trespass as the most dominant threats. The result also showed that the increase in employment, creation of man made forest and encouragement of private forestry accounted for 41.65, 19.85 and 10.19% respectively. It was observed that there was no significant difference among the various rates of decline of the forest estates under review.

Key words: Policy evaluation, environmental protection, consolidation, exploitation, pervasive issues.