The management of Ecomaf Ghana is grateful to The Rufford Foundation for financing this project in 2018. We are also grateful to the following Foresters for their technical advice and support whenever it was needed: Mr. Donkor Tweneboa (the then District Manager, Forest Services Division, Mampong-Ashanti); Mr. Seth Amponsah (Technical Officer, Forest Services Division); Mr. Anthony Faibil (Technical Officer, Forest Services Division, Mampong-Ashanti); and Mr. David Agyei (Forest Guard, Forest Services Division, Mampong-Ashanti).

This research project has demonstrated how farmers can voluntarily be involved in community reforestation projects that will lead to sustainable agroforestry. This is one of the projects in Ghana where farmer-based associations are formed in specific communities to grow trees amidst food crops to reforest degraded portions of forests and in turn support their livelihoods with the crops they grow and the employment services they get from the project.

The 2019 phase of the project hopes to include farmer education so that as the farmers assist in restoring the degraded forest, they get more skills in farming to produce the expected output to support their livelihoods. By the end of the project, the participating farmers will have more farming skills to undertake highly productive farming on their own farmlands. Leaving this land bare will attract illegal farmers who will gradually encroach on the rest of the reserve. Reforesting the degraded portions of this forest will reduce the threat on biodiversity extinction in the reserve and sustain the ecological functions of the forest