The Effect of Forest Degradation on Community Livelihood in the Rainforest of Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The conflict between man and the rainforest ecosystem has over time been very controversial due to man’s impact on the forest ecosystem. It is against this backdrop that this paper seeks to evaluate the effect of forest degradation on community livelihood within the rainforest zone of Cross River State. Information on forest products, distance and time require for forest exploitation and forest products harvested were obtained and analyzed using ANOVA and multiple regression. Results obtained shows that the rainforest ecosystem has been degraded due to excessive exploitation of the forest resources which adversely affect the secondary forest and fallows as evidenced in the F-ratio of 52.71 greater than the t-ratio of 3.15 at 0.05 level of confidence. However, it was discovered that there was a significant variation in the amount of income generated across all the stages of the forest which shows that the quantity of forest product and income of the people tend to vary with the degrading condition of the forest ecosystem. Therefore, effective measures should be put in place in order to stop the forest ecosystem from excessive depletion