Wandering animals are a big threat to Green Ghana Project- Prof Gordon

Director of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies at the University of Ghana, Professor Chris Gordon, has stated that one of the biggest threats to the Green Ghana Project is the presence of stray animals in various communities.

According to Professor Gordon, contrary to people’s belief that cutting down trees is our biggest issue, stray animals, including cows and goats, pose the biggest threat to young seedlings.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Professor Gordon stated that the Green Ghana Project is a great initiative. He  also advised that an ordinance should be made to keep stray animals from the streets and from wandering around and grazing openly.

“There is a point I will like to raise on this issue of concern and that point is that we are planting these trees and somebody made a comment about cutting trees and things but really the biggest danger to these trees is actually all these animals which are free and wandering around. We have sheep, goats, cows even in Accra, and next thing you realise they will decimate all these young seedlings. So I think we have to look at this as a totality; just as we have an ordinance that looks at how many trees you need to plant, We should also have an ordinance looking at how animals in these urban areas can be kept away from the roads and these trees,” he stated.

Professor Gordon added that real estate companies need to consider tree planting in their plans.

“Somebody also raised the issue of real estate companies. You often see them with these roads with no pavements for the pedestrians to walk on and they do not even leave a space between the houses and the roads for people to plant avenue trees. My fundamental issue is that we need to change our mindset away from car-friendly environments to ones which are people-friendly because what the car does is to add pollution to the environment, what the tree does is to take pollution out of the environment.”