GOLD COAST REPORT ON FORESTS. 113 



superintendent, who occasionally had to exercise considerable 

 pressure to ensure their adoption. The arrangement eventually 

 come to, partly by means of legal enactments and partly by admin- 

 istrative steps, pure and simple, was in brief : 



1. That the Sawbwas administered the forest laws in their 

 States and maintained subordinate forest establishments for 

 that purpose, which were in certain matters under the control 

 of the divisional forest officer. 



2. The latter with a suitable staff of Europeans and natives 

 to help him exercised general supervision over the protection 

 and management of the forests, more especially with a view 

 to seeing that the native establishments maintained by the 

 chiefs were carrying out their duties in an efficient manner. 



3. All forest taxes and the revenues derived from the sales 

 of timber were collected by the supreme Government, and the 

 net proceeds divided up in the following proportion : - 



J to the British Government. 

 | to the native chiefs. 



Under this system the annual forest revenue went up by leaps 

 and bounds during my tenure of office. It was Us. 15,000 when I 

 assumed charge of the division, and Us. 120,000 when I left at the 

 end of six years, and the chiefs in the end were more than satis- 

 fied with the arrangements. It seems to me that such an arrange- 

 ment, by which Government reserves to itself, in the principal 

 enactment, the right to interfere in matters of forest policy and 

 administration whenever it is absolutely necessary to do so, yet at 

 the same time allows considerable freedom on the part of the 

 chiefs and native communities to carry out the necessary measures 

 in their own way, is well suited to the requirements of our West 

 African colonies. 



The forest laws of old Southern Nigeria were based on this con- 

 ception of the extent to which the suzerain power should interfere 

 in matters of forest administration in that Protectorate. In 

 these laws, as will be seen presently, native rights and customs 

 were adequately safeguarded, and the principle was recognised all 

 through that the chiefs and communities were entitled to a share 

 of the taxes levied on, and other profits accruing from the exploita- 

 tion of, forest produce. Unfortunately, when the amalgamation 

 of the Colony and Protectorate of Lagos with old Southern Nigeria 

 took place, it was found that the forest proclamation enacted in 

 the former, though otherwise more or less suitable for local re- 

 quirements, was completely nullified in its operations by contain- 

 ing a clause that left the decision as to whether the laws were to 

 come into force in any particular native State with the communi- 

 ties themselves as represented by their respective native counrils. 

 Government thus virtually abandoned all control over directing 

 and determining the forest policy to be pursued in those 

 countries. 



It now rests, from the legal point of view, with the native 

 councils alone to decide whether forest conservancy, which is pre- 

 eminently concerned with the public welfare and good of those 



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