The Conservation Roundtable has called on the federal government to declare a state of emergency on nature parks across the country to serve them from extinction.
This was contained in a communique issued at the end of a two-day round table meeting held in Benin City.
The communique signed by Andy Osa Ehanire, leader of the group, and made available to newsmen, stated that there is a need to sign up collaborations with reputable NGOs in park conservation management such as the African Parks which has recorded huge successes in about a dozen countries, and to create more cross-border sanctuaries; since it is now a painful reality that we do it alone.
It stated that Osemwegie Ebohon Cultural Center and its Founder/Curator, High Priest Osemwegie Ebohon, remain a citadel of nature and biodiversity conservation knowledge and consciousness values that should attract the public infrastructure and other forms of support from the government, being a veritable exponent of African cultural and ecological heritage.
It added that local communities and other stakeholders are meant to be encouraged to adopt pilot schemes in environmental and biodiversity conservation projects to reposition the tenets of age-long policies, evaluation and monitoring of forest regeneration and re-wilding of sanctuaries
The communique also reiterated that beyond the two World Heritage Sites that are cultural landscapes in Nigeria, Sukur and Oshogbo, many more are long due for the attainment of the same status for our ecological treasures that abound across the diverse vegetation from the mangrove swamps in the south to the savannas in the north.
It further lamented that there are obvious deficits in the engagement of scholars in systemic research and advocacy, thus leading to what appears to be a state of collective amnesia, in spite of the presence of large scale unmitigated degradation or destruction to ecological resources.
It added that with the huge annual budgetary allocations and the wide array of security formations, our so-called protected areas have all been ceded to theatres of anarchy through deforestation, land grabbing, banditry, kidnapping and other unrestrained acts of ecological resource plundering.
It maintained that the expected deployment of technological advances in the management of our protected areas has been in serious deficits just as it said for decades, it has been possible to use satellites, drones, CCTV cameras and other technological advances to maintain adequate surveillance for eco-auditing and mitigation, as to stem the nefarious activities in our supposedly pristine parks
