Causes of Hardwood Scarcity in Benue State, Nigeria: A Study of Forestry Management Practices for Improving its Production

Abstract

Hardwood scarcity has been a serious concern to woodworkers and wood merchants in Benue state, Nigeria despite the fact that the area is in the tropical region. Therefore, the study was conducted to identify forestry management practices that would improve hardwood production in Benue state, Nigeria. Four research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A survey research design was adopted for the study and systematic random sampling technique was used to select 13 Local government areas out of 23 for the study. The population for the study comprised of Forest field workers, Forest Heads of Departments at the state Ministry of Agriculture in each Local Government Area and Heads of Forestry Section in the Local Government Council i.e staff of Ministry for Local government and Chieftaincy Affairs. The total population for the study was one hundred and forty eight (148) and all the respondents were used since the population wasn’t much. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to both content and face validation by three experts i.e one from Department of Forestry, University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue state, Nigeria while the other two from Wood Technology section , Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria. Cronbach Apha Formula was used for checking the internal consistency of the instrument and the reliability coefficient of the instrument was found to be 0.89. Mean and standard deviation were used for the analysis of data while Z- test statistics was applied for testing hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed illegal felling of hardwood in the forest; there were many low grade species of wood in the forest and also there were many stunted growth of hardwood species due to lack of forest maintenance . It was recommended that more afforestation with particular reference to hardwood should be established by non governmental organizations, federal and state government, more forest staff should be employed for maintaining the forest in terms of forest protection against pests, removing stunted growth and controlling of weeds in the forest; low grade species of wood in the forest should be removed and replaced with hardwood species. Finally, illegal felling of forest trees should be controlled by using villagers living close to the forest to monitor illegal loggers and circuit television should be used where possible