SAHARA SWEEPS ON

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

SAHARA SWEEPS ON

THREAT TO WEST AFRICA. FOREST PROTECTION NEEDED. The threat of the encroaching Sahara to the West African Colonies’ was described by Professor Stebbing in a lecture to the Geographical Society. The advance of the desert is attributed to the destruction of forests. In West Africa a piece of forest is felled and the material burned. The ashes are spread roughly over the patch, and seed sown with the breaking of the rains. The crop is gathered when ripe, no weeding being done. When weed growth becomes too heavy the shifting cultivator moves on and treats another patch of forest in the same fashion. A forest treated in this way gradually degenerates, and with an increasing population land hunger, or bush hunger, supervenes. Inter-tribal fights occur to acquire fresh bush for The drying-up of the soil and sand invasion fellow; the desert marches on. Professor Stebbing thinks the remedy f , is to be found in reserving broad belts of forest some 1400 miles long. It is a suggestion comparable to the forest belt to be established in the Middle West of the United States. In Africa, as in America, man has been busily destroying fertility and making desert. It is clear that in classical times North Africa was much more fertile than to-day. The forest has been wasted and with it the rainfall and the soil.