By Akinloye NG.
Topical discussions are raging on the Ondo State Government’s directives to cattle herders in the state to get their agricultural business registered with the state for better two-way response to issues connected. The state also has ordered intending defaulters to vacate its government-owned forest reserves.
In this piece, I shall be dwelling on what these reserves are, their Importance and why and how the owners act of protection, control and regulation are legal and constitutional.
Forest reserves aren’t just forests but protected areas established as a conservation scheme for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological interest, which are reserved and managed by the state government.
On these state properties, lumbering or any other means of agricultural practices are heavily controlled and tightly regulated in order for them to serve the purpose of capturing and replacement of elements of biodiversity that would be going into extinction in the other unreserved and uncontrolled harvested forests in the state.
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Government forest reserves also offer watershed protection, purification of air, prevention of soil erosion, research purposes and mitigation of climate change.
Apart from the state securing its forest reserves for the purposes above, it also must make sure the reserves are not converted to criminal dens.
So, in accordance with relevant sections of the 1999 Constititution, Land Use Act and state law/Regulations on agricultural produce/practices, the state government, in order to control and regulate economic activities in the reserved areas, regulate business activities in the state and provide security for both lives and properties in the state, has every legal stand to ask anyone to register their economic activities like every other persons in the state or vacate its properties- the forest reserves.
