(a) Highlight three factors which favour lumbering in either Zaire or Cote d'Ivoire (b) Describe the method of lumber in one of the countries chosen in (a) ...

Answer Details

(a) Three factors that favour lumbering in Cote d'Ivoire (or Zaire/DR Congo):

• Extensive dense tropical rain-forest: a large area is covered by rain-forest containing valuable hardwoods such as mahogany, obeche, iroko and sapele, giving a big supply of timber.
• Hot, wet equatorial climate: high temperatures and heavy, well-distributed rainfall promote rapid and continuous tree growth all year.
• Navigable rivers and improving transport: rivers, together with roads, railways and ports (Abidjan, San Pedro; or the Congo river system), make it possible to move heavy logs to sawmills and to the coast for export; a market abroad and available labour also help.

(b) Method of lumbering in Cote d'Ivoire:

Lumbering is carried out by selective felling because the valuable trees are scattered among many worthless ones. First the forest is surveyed and the mature, valuable trees are marked. Access roads and tracks are cut into the forest. The selected trees are felled with power saws (chain-saws) and the branches removed. The heavy logs are dragged (skidded) to a loading point by tractors or winches, then loaded onto trucks or floated down rivers to the sawmills at the coast, where they are sawn into planks or processed into plywood and veneer for local use and export.

(c) Four problems associated with lumbering in Africa:

• Mixed nature of the forest: valuable trees are widely scattered among many useless species, making felling and extraction costly.
• Difficulty of transport: the heavy logs and the dense, wet forest with few roads make movement of timber slow and expensive.
• Pests, diseases and dense undergrowth: tsetse fly, mosquitoes and thick undergrowth hamper work in the forest, and some timber is attacked by pests.
• Shortage of skilled labour and capital, and deforestation: lack of trained workers and machinery slows the industry, while over-cutting leads to forest destruction and soil erosion.