Residents of Matongo and Muruta communes in Kayanza province (northern Burundi) threaten the natural forest of Kibira, the Burundian Office for Environmental Protection (OPDE) deplores. Information confirmed by local authorities who explain this situation by the lack of arable land for the occupants, particularly the Batwa, a minority long marginalized in the small East African nation.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

Consistent administrative sources say that the perpetrators of deforestation are, among others, people who hunt game and seek arable land.

« They pursue the monkeys and the birds and eat them. And then, there is a severe shortage of arable land in this most populated province of the country. The Batwa, who do not have land, engage in cutting trees to clear land to cultivate,” says a local authority on condition of anonymity.

Next door, according to the same source, there are residents looking for firewood which they harvest in large quantities to sell at the market.

The residents of this forest are asking the government to grant them land to cultivate.

« If the government gave us arable land, we would abandon these activities which threaten Kibira. We know that it is of great importance for us and for the country, but we have no other choice because we must live », explain men from the region, interviewed by SOS Médias Burundi.

Kibira constitutes an important source of water, electricity and oxygen for the country. The Kayanza, Bubanza, Cibitoke and Muramvya provinces (center and northwest) are supplied with drinking water from forest sources.

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A forest ranger in the Kibira nature reserve, DR