Eleven years after the ban on illegal chainsaw milling, the practice continues to be a major source of supply to domestic timber markets, thereby sustaining rural economies and livelihood. Currently, 86,000 people are involved in chainsaw-related operations as compared to approximately 100,000 people in the formal logging industry, a study conducted under a five-year project dubbed "Developing Alternatives for Illegal Chainsaw Milling in Ghana and Guyana Through Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue", has revealed. The project, which seeks to address the chainsaw menace and reinforce the objective of sustainable forest management, is being funded by Tropenbos International-Ghana in collaboration with Forestry Commission (FC) and the Forest Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG). According to the study, chainsaw operations contribute significantly to household budgets as more than half of the people involved in chainsaw activities earn 80 percent of their household income from it. Mr. James Parker, the project co-ordinator who presented the study at a district stakeholders meeting at Juaso, said the state loses more than US$18 million per annum due to the operators' refusal to pay stumpage fees. He said the figure exceeded the stumpage fees collected from licensed loggers between 2000 and 2003 which was US$ 9.1 million, adding that Ghana's Forestry Commission had the lowest rate of rent collection in West Africa. Mr. Parker said assuming 40 per cent of the potential stumpage from chainsaw operators could be captured under a regularised regime, government could earn about US$ 7 million per annum. He said fees paid by chainsaw operators to farmers and land owners presently correspond to about 38 percent of the potential revenue that would have been collected by the FC. He, therefore, argued that if government was willing to pay the US$ 7 million to farmers and land owners as compensation for protecting the trees, it could still retain US$ 11 million annually. Mr. De-graft Fokuo, the District Chief Executive, said activities of chainsaw operators were fast depleting the nation's forest cover yet they were source of supply for local markets and called for a holistic approach to address the problem. He suggested the formation of task force in all Area Councils to check the menace and urged the FC to encourage farmers to embark on tree plantations. Mr. Samuel Akwatia, the District Forest Manager, said the protection of forest reserves was a shared responsibility and called on stakeholders to join efforts to reverse the trend. Source: GNA