PERCEPTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES BY FUELWOOD SELLERS IN BORGU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

INTRODUCTION The history of fuelwood use can be traced through human advancement from dependence on wild food and fruits gathering to stages involving roasting in the wild to actual food cooking in settled habitations. The availability, selection and preference for fuelwood must have remained a function of prevailing ecosystems, densities and degrees of advancement of human populations. A wealth of evidence concerning man’s past choice of fuelwood exists in archaeological sites throughout Africa (Prior, 1988). Fuelwood constitutes the major forest products from savanna vegetation as it accounts for a larger part of household energy needs, most especially in the rural areas (Oyegade, 1995). Estimates by Fuwape (1985) showed that 95 percent of Nigerians living in savanna region depend on fuelwood as a domestic source of energy. Many people, mostly women, living in the rural areas of the region have fuelwood gathering as major occupation. Biomass fuels now meet about 80% of domestic energy requirements in Nigeria (Obueh, 2000). This is because the country is experiencing its worst energy crisis in its economic history, which has raised the prices of petroleum products such as kerosene and gas above the purchasing power of most consumers, especially the rural poor, who make up 70% of Nigeria’s population. Fuelwood consumption pattern in Nigeria shows that low-income level consumes higher than high-income level while consumption in the rural areas was higher than that of the urban centres (Obueh, 2000). The widespread use of fuelwood and charcoal is attributable to various reasons. One of the reasons is that fuelwood is often the cheapest and most accessible form of energy supply in the rural areas. In many cases, it is harvested at no monetary cost as a common property resource from forests and from scattered pockets or belts of trees along field margins or roadsides and on waste or common ground. The dependence on fuelwood is further exacerbated by high cost of kerosene which could have served as an alternative energy source to the rural people. Studies by the then Federal Environmental Protection Agency, FEPA (1992) indicated that although Nigeria banned all timber exports in 1976, deforestation from fuelwood extraction remains one of Nigeria’s top environmental problems, which directly affects about 50 million Nigerians mostly through declining wood supplies. World-wide, fuelwood collection may not be responsible for major deforestation as dry fuelwood is mostly being collected. However in Nigeria, the trend is quite different. Increase in demographic growth in Nigeria has led to a corresponding increase in total fuelwood consumption (Obueh, 2000). It is estimated that Nigeria is annually losing between 400,000 to 600,000 hectares of the total 9.6 million hectares forest cover to This study was carried out to examine fuelwood sellers’ perception of environmental issues in Borgu Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria. A total of 120 fuelwood sellers supplied primary data on their socio-economic characteristics, sources of information on environmental issues, tree species commanding high patronage and perception of environmental issues. More than half of the respondents fall within the age of 31-40 years (53%), 63.3% were females, 87.5% were married and 61% had no formal education while 51% obtained information on environmental issues from radio and television. The results further indicated that Detarium microcarpum, Vitellaria paradoxa, Crossopteryx febrifuga, Pterocarpus erinaceus, Combretum nigricans and Isoberlinia doka were the tree species commanding high patronage in the study area. Also, the fuelwood sellers have adequate information on environmental issues not only in their locality but globally. The study concluded that since they are fully aware of the consequences of their activities on the environment, they should be involved in the design of policies aimed at reducing the rate of extraction of fuelwood in the area.