Save Atewa Forest
Please support our campaign for Atewa Forest to be designated as a National Park. We are appealing to the Government of Ghana to abandon its plans with the Government of China to extract bauxite – the ore of aluminium – from the Atewa Hills.
Atewa Forest is well known for harbouring a high diversity of threatened and endemic species (those species found nowhere else) including birds, mammals, reptiles, butterflies and amphibians. And now, A Rocha scientists have discovered that the globally endangered White-naped Mangabey Cercocebus lunulatus is living in Atewa Forest.
The mangabey – a rare terrestrial monkey – is known from only a handful of sites in Ghana and is considered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to be globally Critically Endangered with extinction.
The mangabey was discovered during the course of a camera trapping survey of Atewa Forest. A Rocha scientists were trying to establish the current status of animals living on the forest floor which are often vulnerable to hunting and trapping.
In recent months the importance of the ecosystem services that Atewa Forest provides to many Ghanaians was highlighted in a report to the Government of Ghana titled The Economics of the Atewa Forest Range, Ghana. Chief amongst these services is the clean water supply flowing from the Atewa hills which many millions of Ghanaians depend on.
This makes it all the more concerning that the Government of Ghana with the Government of China wants to push ahead with plans to extract bauxite – the ore of aluminium – from the Atewa Hills at Kyebi. Atewa Forest needs your help.
Primate experts say that our photo of a White-naped Mangabey in Atewa Forest is the only one taken in the wild in the whole of Ghana. (Click to enlarge.)
What you can do
1. Sign the petition. We are petitioning the President of Ghana to turn Atewa into a National Park, as that’s the only lasting solution to the threats over this unique landscape and its human and non-human inhabitants. Signing is simple, please do it now.
2. Donate. Our joint effort to save one of West Africa’s green jewels requires considerable resources. If you can, please chip in by going over to the donations page and selecting “A Rocha Ghana”.
More information
Please see our PRESS RELEASE (15 Dec 2017 for immediate publication): ‘Critically endangered primate discovered in bauxite-threatened Atewa Forest, Ghana’ – it includes more detailed background information on Atewa Forest and the impending threats to it.
Dr Russell Mittermeier (Chair of Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Committee) and Dr Inza Koné (President of the African Primatological Society) have already expressed their concerns to President Akufo-Addo. Please read their joint letter.
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Letter to China’s Ministry of Commerce from 260 NGOs calling on them not to prop up environmentally and socially damaging projects around the world which are threatened by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bauxite mining in Atewa Forest is listed amongst 60 of the worst projects highlighted.