NIGERIA

-- (Credit: Anand Singh Rawat) The last big rain-forest in West Africa, Cross River National Park in south-east Nigeria, may yet be saved from going under the axe. Local and international environmental groups have raised a furore over the proposed logging operation covering 100 sq km on the edge of the park by the Chinese-owned Wempco industrial group. The pro-tests have forced the group to submit an environmental impact assessment report to the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (fepa). It will only be the second company ever to do so.

Green groups have warned that the logging scheme would endanger the entire 6,000 sq km national park, which is 40 per cent of the green cover left in a country where 95 per cent forests have already been destroyed. The park is home to over 1,500 plant species (some of which are rare indigenous ones), the only gorilla population in West Africa and dozens of other endangered species. fepa had nearly given its approval to Wempco last month, when its officials were detained
for misuse of funds. Earlier, the Nigerian Conservation Foundation and the World Wide Fund for Nature had told the government to reject plans to log the country's last rainforest.