Mognore-Murugu community natural resources management

The Mole National Park is the largest of Ghana's national park system. It was gazetted in 1971 and comprises an area of 4840 square km of open savannah woodland, boval, riverine forest, floodplain grassland and swamp. It is rich in flora, with 742 species recorded including 4 endemics, 12 disjunct and 24 rare species. Surrounding the Park are 27 remote villages, with few services and infrastructural facilities available, and high levels of poverty and malnutrition. The major activities in the area are subsistence farming (cassava, yam, millet, guinea corn), hunting and gathering (bambara beans and sheanut). As a result of the poverty situation, a range of damaging activities are noted particularly within the boundaries of the adjoining National Park: there is poaching of animals, unsustainable exploitation of sheanuts, wood-cutting, and fire-setting. The collective pressure of such activities from the 27 communities bordering the Park represents its biggest conservation concern. Mognore and Murugu are two of the villages surrounding Mole and the project concentrates on providing these two communities with the tools, options, and commitment to secure a more sustainable system of wildlife resource management. The overall goal is a richer and more sustainable savannah ecosystem, centred on the villages of Murugu and Mognore, in which wildlife and their habitats are restored, and the quality of life of the human populations enhanced. This will be achieved through two complementary approaches: 1) the establishment of Community Resource Management Areas, with a functioning constitution and supported by resource assessment and management planning. Emphasis will be given to providing the constitutional and legal framework for such areas, as well as the tools for making sensible management decisions.; 2) the initiation of improved income generation activities concentrating on the development of techniques and markets for: bee-keeping; small-scale activities of women (gari and shea butter), and dry season vegetable growing. In addition, the project encompasses building more commitment to the approach through education and environmental awareness-raising. Whilst this project focuses on two communities, the longer terms benefits will go further. An environmental awareness programme will help build interest in sustainable natural resource management approaches to other villages surrounding the Mole National Park. The project builds on a long history of community liaison commencing with the first visit to the Murugu community ten years ago by A Rocha Ghana. The acceptance of A Rocha by the Murugu and Mognore communities, together with the desire of the Mole National Park to work with A Rocha in community outreach, provides the ideal platform to launch this current project. A Rocha is currently working with the Park's Community Outreach Unit in a range of initiatives that support this current project.

This project sought to empower local people in Murugu and Mognore to manage and sustainably utilise their own natural resources for socio-economic development. This will be achieved through the establishment of CREMAs and the development of income generating activities, complemented by conservation education programs. In close collaboration with Mole National Park (MNP), community members are employing strategies that consolidate community level leadership institutions, and a 62 sq. km CREMA was established with functional CREMA management constitution and articles. Arrangements are far advanced to finalize legislative framework articles necessary for unlimited devolution of management authority over the natural resources in the CREMA to the community. Several income generating activities were developed through the provision of low-cost technology, and provision of start-up input. In all, 98 and 30 actors were identified in eleven communities, trained and resourced in beekeeping and dry season gardening respectively. Traditional women based activities like Gari processing and Shea butter extractions were improved with the provision of Gari and Shea butter extraction facilities. These activities were complemented with an elaborate conservation education awareness raising. Posters with information about Bushfire prevention and management as well as Tree management themes wered developed in 2 different local languages and 1 in English. They were circulated in more than 15 communities on the fringe of MNP. These educational activities were supported by demonstrable improved bee-keeping activities which would secure environmental health at the same time securing the livelihood of participating households. Long term capacity in natural resource management is being developed with the establishment of environmental clubs in schools within 10 communities.