- The Ekuri Initiative, a forest stewardship organization run by one of the indigenous communities whose land lies in the path of the Cross River Superhighway, has already delivered 253,000 signatures to the federal government asking for their ancestral forests to be protected.
- Several protected areas, including the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, the Afi River Forest Reserve, Cross River National Park, Cross River South Forest Reserve, and Ukpon River Forest Reserve, would also be impacted by development of the highway, WCS notes.
- A number of threatened species live in these protected areas, including forest elephants, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, Preuss’s red colobus monkeys, pangolins, slender-snouted crocodiles, African gray parrots, and many others.
The clearing of a corridor for the Cross River Superhighway in Nigeria, which would cut through the southern half of the country, has been temporarily halted as a result of protests by local communities that led to an environmental impact assessment process now underway.
But work on the highway could reportedly be restarted at any time, despite increasingly louder calls from both within and without Nigeria to either rehabilitate existing highways or reroute the proposed highway so it does not destroy protected areas and community forests.
The proposed six-lane superhighway in the West African country’s Cross River State would stretch 260 kilometers (162 miles) with a 10-kilometer (six-mile) buffer on both sides. If completed, it would displace 180 indigenous communities and threaten one of the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which has launched an international campaign calling on Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, Environment Minister Amina Mohammed, and Cross State Governor Benedict Ayade to stop the highway.
In just the first two weeks following the campaign’s launch, WCS collected nearly 42,000 petition signatures. The Ekuri Initiative, a forest stewardship organization run by one of the indigenous communities whose land lies in the path of the Cross River Superhighway, has already delivered 253,000 signatures to the federal government asking for their ancestral forests to be protected. WCS is partnering with the Ekuri Initiative for its own campaign.
“The proposed highway poses an enormous threat to the cultures and the wildlife of the entire region,” John Calvelli, WCS’s Executive Vice President for Public Affairs, said in a statement. “We’re happy to lend our support to the Ekuri Initiative in the effort to save the local communities of Cross River State and the irreplaceable natural treasures also found there.”
The two villages of Old Ekuri and New Ekuri co-manage a 33,600-hectare (about 83,000-acre) community-owned forest, which is not just one of the largest in West Africa but also an inspiration to other communities and community forest practitioners in West and Central Africa. The Ekuri communities have denounced the highway project as “a land grab in the guise of a Super Highway.”
Several protected areas, including the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, the Afi River Forest Reserve, Cross River National Park, Cross River South Forest Reserve, and Ukpon River Forest Reserve, would also be impacted by development of the highway, WCS notes. A number of threatened species live in these protected areas, including forest elephants, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, Preuss’s red colobus monkeys, pangolins, slender-snouted crocodiles, African gray parrots, and many others.
WCS is not alone in attempting to bring international attention to bear on the situation in Nigeria. The Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers (ALERT) issued a press release last month saying that, if completed as proposed, the Cross River Superhighway “could rapidly worsen a deepening environmental and social crisis in Nigeria.”
“Nigeria needs better roads, but this is one of the most ill-conceived infrastructure projects we’ve seen anywhere,” said Professor William Laurance, an environmental scientist from James Cook University in Australia and the director of ALERT.
The ALERT release points to Cross River National Park, which would be skirted by the highway, as especially vulnerable. The park is home to 18 species of primates, including the critically endangered Cross River Gorilla, known as one of Africa’s rarest Great Apes because there are fewer than 300 individuals across its entire range, plus forest elephants, leopards, and other imperiled wildlife. A 100 meter-wide clearing has already been bulldozed in the park’s buffer zone in anticipation of highway construction.
Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, meanwhile, is where many of the remaining 7,000 wild drill monkeys live. Not only does the highway threaten their habitat, but efforts to release captive-bred drills in order to boost the wild population numbers have so far been thwarted by the proposed highway project, as well.
“Nigeria has already lost nine-tenths of its forests, with much of its surviving forest being fragmented and overhunted,” Professor Thomas Lovejoy, an ALERT member and former environmental advisor to three U.S. presidents, said in the press release. “In this context, Cross River National Park is irreplaceable — a biological jewel.”
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