Socio-Cultural Practices Promoting The Incidence Of Bushfires: A Study Of The Sissala East District In The Upper West Region

ABSTRACT

Bushfire serves as a natural instrument for generating re-growth and new life enabling fire dependent species to survive, maintain biodiversity and habitat structure. This study examined the nature of the prevalent socio-cultural practices inducing the incidence of bushfires and the effectiveness of the preventive measures put in place to curb it in the Sissala East District. Multiple methods were employed in the study including interview schedules, personal and focus group interviews and participants mapping. To understand the prevailing socio-cultural practices and key causal factors of the incidence of bushfires in the district, the analysis focused on the nature of the socio-cultural practices, how they influenced the incidence of the bushfires, how it affected the inhabitants of the district and the outcomes of the interventions put in place. The findings of the study indicated that appropriate techniques, policies and strategies for dealing with bushfires at the grass root were either missing or if known, have not for some reasons been disseminated and applied by local people. The slow response of local institutions is reflected generally in the inability to reduce the rate at which bushfires are started during the harmattan season and at the start of the farming season. Bushfires occur mostly through the destructive activities of group-hunters, herdsmen and the negligence on the part of cigarette smokers, honey harvesters, and bush-burnings by farmers. Food and cash-crops worth millions of cedis have been destroyed by bushfires. It is recommended that education should be a priority of all Ghanaians to sensitize themselves well and other community members on the need to avoid setting bushfires, especially during the harmattan season. The incidence of bushfires in this country and its destructive effects on the environment cannot be overrated.