Sudan: Ecologists Win Legal Case To Save Forest
10/18/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Ecologists Win Legal Case To Save Forest
Source: Panafrican News Agency
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 18, 1999
Khartoum, Sudan (PANA)- The Sudanese Environment Protection Society
has won a case in court to protect the historical Khartoum Forest
from extinction due to the reckless dumping of the city's garbage.
The Khartoum Environment Court has ordered the offenders, the
Khartoum Beautification and Cleaning Company, and its employer, the
Khartoum municipality, to look elsewhere for dumping the garbage.
For years now, the company had used to take the city's waste,
including road dust and debris collected from building sites, dumping
it in the forest, once an attractive recreation zone by virtue of its
good location on the White Nile.
The accumulation of mountains of garbage had made the forest a hiding
place for lawbreakers of all sorts.
Fires lit by these people for cooking and for other purposes during
cold nights often spread to the forest trees reducing them to ashes.
A cloud of smoke is, accordingly, always hanging on the forest.
Ecologists say many of the trees had dried up because the dumping of
garbage has obstructed flood water from inundating the forest.
Even migratory birds had suffered from the demise of the forest.
"Migratory birds journeying between Europe and Africa have now missed
a cosy resting place," a source from the society told PANA. He
expressed the fear that many of these birds might have died after
failing to complete their flight to the next station in both
directions.
For the forest to return to its previous condition, he has suggested
that its ground be levelled and replanted with grass.
Dead trees should be replaced with new ones of the same species, he
added.