Wild forests of silviculture
In the forested countries around the Gulf of Guinea, enrichment planting in dense forests with few naturally occurring commercial species began in the 1920s. It is clearly necessary to offset forest losses from logging by conducting silvicultural operations to reconstitute a forest's initial composition using suitable species. Such a strategy, which is sometimes strongly opposed but would convert wild forests into forests with greater potential value, can only be applied with a view to the long term. And this is only possible if the means provided to foresters are guaranteed over the long term. Enrichment planting is justified by the small number of commercial forest species, which will still be the same species in fifty years' time because they have the best technical properties. A for¬est enriched with okoumé, limbo and niangon to produce 50 or 60 commercially valuable trees per hectare will therefore always have more value than a wild for¬est. Enrichment is also justified by the increasing rarity of the most sought-after species, which cannot regenerate under dense cover. For example, we know that the abundance of okoumé in certain areas is the result of early human settlements that have since disappeared. Enrichment is also justified as a means of preventing logging from encroaching into the entire forest and gradually destroying it. Sawmills often decimate the forest surrounding them, and forest roads contribute to its fragmentation until crop fields take over the soil entirely. With no listing of protected forests and no silviculture, within just a few decades there would be no more economically viable forestry and no more forest industries manufacturing timber products for export. Abstract adapted by the editorial team.