FORESTRY 1 83 



For the training of African subordinates, there are schools of 

 forestry at Busoga in Uganda, and Ibadan in Nigeria, and courses 

 are held in the Gold Coast and elsewhere. The proportion of native 

 to European staff in the forestry department is higher in Nyasa- 

 land than in any other colonial territory. The subordinate native 

 staff forms the link between the forest department and the African 

 farmer, and therefore, it is essential to have facilities for training 

 in each territory, so that the guards and rangers can be as far as 

 possible recruited from the tribes with whom they have to deal. 



In most territories the whole forestry estate is directly adminis- 

 tered by the forest departments. In some, however, native head- 

 men or native administrations are given certain responsibilities 

 over those reserves of which the principal function is to supply 

 timber for building and firewood. Thus in Nyasaland a village 

 forest scheme, constituted by rules under the forest ordinance, has 

 led to the establishment of some 3,000 village forests in charge of 

 local headmen, and the scheme, under adequate supervision by 

 forest and administrative officers, is working well. These village 

 forests are not in charge of, or financed by, the native administra- 

 tions, but the village headmen to whom the areas are allocated 

 are the sole authority for management and cutting. They usually 

 carry out simple operations such as weeding and thinning, and 

 institute measures for fire protection. No payment for produce 

 from the village forests is demanded by a headman from his own 

 people. In Nigeria several areas of rain forest, amounting to some 

 4,600 square miles, of value for commercial exploitation, have 

 been handed over to native administrations, notably a large area 

 near Benin. Exploitation is carried out through concessionaires. 

 Careful supervision by the forestry department is of course neces- 

 sary, and a European forest officer is seconded to the native 

 administration for this purpose. 



The delegation of authority for forest reserves to the native 

 administrations is a logical application of the system of indirect 

 rule, but it involves certain administrative difficulties. A system 

 under which forest guards are responsible not to the forest officer 

 but to the native authority depends for its efficacy on a full appre- 

 ciation by the latter of the aims and methods of forest conservation. 

 In Tanganyika, though experiments in this direction have been 



