How Boki women champion reforestation by planting Bird-Eye pepper

 A large number of women in Boki LGA of Cross River State are helping to regenerate their forests which presently have been destroyed by activities of illicit wood logging.

They have come together as farmers to plant bird eye pepper which they aim to harvest in commercial quantity.

The planting of this specie of pepper in Boki communities is deliberate, according to the coordinator of the local female farmers, Ambassador Florence Kekong.

She said communities in Boki, Etung and Obudu which are neighbouring local government areas are blessed vastly with natural rainforests.

“So the bird eye peppers attract birds which come to eat and spread it.

“After eating the bird’s eye pepper, they often excrete the spicy pepper in the forest which soon sprouts and spread on its own in the forests.

“The women would then harvest it at will.”

She commended the women peasant farmers for working hard to replenish the forest now depleted and damaged by illegal tree felling.

Kekong expressed displeasure at the fact that the women are worst hit by ongoing massive forest and environmental damage in the community.

She said the women are into peasant farming in the community and not wood logging, yet they bear the negative consequences of illegal wood felling the more.

“Natives who attempt to stop logging receive threats daily.

“Women are worst hit. They have no voice. The impact is negative.

“Our farms are being destroyed by daring perpetrators of wood logging, allegedly backed by a powerful cabal.”

Another farmer, Mrs. Louis Dibang of Njua Kaku in the Irruan community of Boki LGA, said all the natural vegetables and mushrooms that hitherto, germinated on their own, are no more available due to deforestation and forest degradation.