Impact of Forest Policy and Law on Forest Management in Gambari Forest Reserve in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the impact of forest policy and law on the management of Gambari Forest Reserve in order to identify factors that would improve forest policy and law as well as their implementation and enforcement. Random sampling techniques was used in this study. Both questionnaire and interview methods were used in collecting the needed information from the respondents. One hundred and twenty (120) copies of structured questionnaires were used to obtain information from the community dwellers. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The Landsat Imagery of the forest reserve was analyzed using ArcGIS to generate information about the forest cover changes between 1987 and 2020. Logistic regression was also used to determine the factors responsible for enhancement of implementation and enforcement of forest policy and law. Results show that 54.4% of the respondents agreed that the forest policy and law were effective in upholding the management of the forest sustainably, 34.2% stated that the forest policy and law were slightly effective, while only 11.3% of them implied that forest policy and law was ineffective. It was also revealed from the study that about 21% of the forest land cover has been degraded from 163.50km² in 1987 to 143.67km² in 2020. Findings also showed that, the enhancement of implementation and enforcement of forest policy and law would be mostly influenced by Increase staff recruitment with odd ratio (2.33), followed by Provision of training (1.28), also Increase in penalty forest offenders (1.20) and lastly, creation of awareness program (1.00). Their odd ratios are up to 1.0.