Editorial: 8 Forest Reserves Rescued – Good News But …

The Ghanaian Times quoted President John Dramani Mahama in its Tuesday, June 3, 2025 publication that his government had suc­cessfully flushed out illegal miners from eight out of nine no-go forest reserves in the country.

In the view of the President, this is a major milestone in the country’s fight against the illegal mining menace, popularly known as galamsey. President Mahama, however, noted that the small scale mining sector holds a major place in Ghana’s devel­opment, if properly harnessed.

“Artisanal miners are not enemies of the state. If properly trained and supported, they can be allies in our development. Working together with the small-scale mining sector, we will reclaim our forest reserves and restore the purity of our water bodies.”

The Times further quoted the President as saying that there would be a major shift in the permit­ting regime to ensure accountability. “We will track excavators to know whether they are being used for illegal mining. Ghana currently has more excavators than the rest of Africa. The new permitting regime will not allow you to import any excavator unless you have a valid permit to do so,” Mahama reportedly stated.

According to Scientists, trees are essential for human survival and well-being, providing vital resources, ecosystem services and benefits for our physical and mental health. They produce oxygen, help regulate the water cycle, prevent soil erosion and support biodiversity. Trees also play a crucial role in combating climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide and offer a range of resources for local communities, including food, medicine and building materials.

But despite these important roles that trees play for the survival of human beings, illegal miners threw caution to the wind and were using heavy machinery, especially excavators, to destroy our forests in the name of searching for gold.

The past governments deployed hundreds of military men and police to fight these illegal miners in the Ashanti, Eastern, Western and Western North Regions, but they could not defeat them because apart from death traps they set in the forests, the miners are also heavily armed.

They (illegal miners) kept on cutting down the trees, especially in places designated as forest reserves, because aside arming themselves in the forests, they also had powerful people in government defending them. In the end, they succeeded in not only destroying the forests, but river bodies as well.

Until the advent of illegal mining in the proportion we are seeing today in Ghana, one could easily fetch water from our rivers and drink directly without any purification. But today, only those not afraid to die will dare drink directly from rivers such as Offing, Ankobrah and Tano among a host of others.

The reason is that, water in these rivers are no more wholesome, as the illegal miners have polluted them with poisonous chemical like cyanide. The most annoying aspect of it, as we have always been saying, is that those sponsoring these illegal miners are sitting in Accra and Kumasi and drinking treated water from Ghana Water Company, whilst the poor people are suffering from their wicked actions in the rural areas.

It is upon the basis of this that we are very elated with the announcement by the president that the miners have been flushed out of our forest reserves. But whilst commending President John Mahama for the action that his government has taken, we wish to also draw his attention to the fact that his fight against illegal mining will be judged based on the turbidity levels of major rivers in the country, especially those in the mining areas.

Since the President took over the reins of power, the exchange rate of the Cedi to the US dollar has tumbled from GHS16 to the present GHS10. This has positively affected prices of goods and services in the country, especially transport fares. This great feat is there for every Ghanaian to see.

In the same way the citizens of this country expect the turbidity levels of our water bodies to return to normalcy. Anything short of this will make the galamsey fight meaningless. Indeed, the fight against illegal mining will be meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of our water bodies from the hands of the nation wreckers. So The Chronicle will not applaud the president yet, though he has shown the determination fight against the canker.

On the day that our water bodies will become clean, we use this same column and in fact our front pages to acknowledge the good works of the president. For now, we say kudos but there is more work to be done to achieve the total liberation of our forests and water bodies from the hands of the illegal miners.

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