In March 2007, a severe tropical storm raked and disrupted normal life for the people of Ganta in Northern Liberia. The storm left scores of people severely injured, and destroyed close to 200 residential homes, offices, schools, and a hospital building. Indeed, the people of Ganta definitely deserve special care and attention for this great misfortune. However, unless, corrective steps are taken in the immediate future to compensate for years of unregulated mining, hunting, farming, and deforestation activities across Liberia, the Ganta tropical storm will be only a symptom of the many environmental problems that Liberia is likely to face now and in the future.

Ganta, like most parts of Liberia, was a flushing virgin forestland until the 1920s when the Liberian government obtained a $5 million loan from the American company, Firestone Plantations Company, at a 7 percent interest rate to offset some of its cash flow liquidity problems. The government was seriously behind in meeting its monthly payroll and other expenditures, which resulted in the intermittent payments of civil servant salaries, so the loan seemed like a very good idea. But the loan negotiations also netted Firestone a lucrative 99-year deal with the Liberian government to purchase Liberian virgin forestlands at the sweetheart rate of six cents per acre to construct a number of rubber plantations in Liberia to fuel the company’s tire business.

Under this 1926 agreement, Firestone obtained 130,000 acres of land at Harbel, near Liberia’s current international airport, and 20,000 acres of land in Harper in Southeastern Liberia. The total acreage of land Firestone purchased for its rubber plantations in Liberia exceeded one million in latter years, but the massive clearing by Firestone of virgin Liberian forestlands to plant rubber trees was the beginning of Liberia’s current environmental problems, as other companies followed the Firestone example by clearing an additional 1.9 million acres of virgin forestlands across Liberia between 1949 and 1959 for the planting of rubber. The Liberia Company (1949) of American and Liberian shareholders operated on 100,000 acres in Montserrado County, followed by the B. F. Goodrich Company (1954) with 600,000 acres of land north of Monrovia in the present Bomi County. The Liberian Agricultural Company (1959) of Italian shareholders and the Salala Rubber Corporation (1959) of joint Dutch-German/private Liberian operated on 600,000 acres of land each in Grand Bassa and Bong Counties, respectively. In fact, a total of 460 smaller privately-owned rubber plantations were operational in Liberia alongside these big companies in the 1950s alone.

Apart from the rubber plantations, many cocoa plantations also sprang up in Liberia between 1977 and 1982 that resulted in further cutting down of about 85,000 acres of the country’s virgin forestlands. Of the 85,000 acres, the Liberia Coffee and Cocoa Corporation (LCCC), in the 1970s operated two cocoa plantations in Lofa County (36, 700-acre) and in Nimba County (31,500-acre), where Ganta is also located, while the remaining 16,800 acres were operated on by domestic cocoa farmers in various parts of Liberia. More than 92,000 acres of virgin forestlands were also cleared in Nimba and Bong Counties for the planting of coffee, while by 1983, more than 35,000 acres of virgin forestlands in Sinoe, Grand Bassa, and Nimba counties had been cleared for oil palms plantations. These oil palms plantations were operated by such companies as Liberia Produce & Marketing Corporation (LPMC), Liberia Palm and Produce Corporation (LPPC), Butuo Oil Palm Corporation (BOPC), and the Decoris Oil Palm Corporation (DOPC). LPPC also operated a 20,000-acre coconuts plantation in Greenville, Sinoe County.

n addition, the 1950s and 1960s saw the beginning of iron ore mining operations in Liberia, which added greatly to the country’s current environmental problems as well. The Liberia Mining Company (LMCO), a Liberian-American joint venture, began operations in Bomi Hills near Monrovia in 1952, followed in 1953 by the Liberian American Minerals Company (LAMCO) in Nimba County. LAMCO set about its 70-year ore exploration deal with the Liberian government by clearing 500 square miles of the country’s highest range, Mount Nimba, near Ganta, the scene of the recent tropical storm. In 1958, the German-Liberian Mining Company (DELIMCO) cut down trees in the virgin forests covering its 30-squaremile concession area, while in 1960 the National Iron Ore Company (NIOC), a majority Liberian government- owned primarily cut down trees at its operation site in Mano River, near the Liberian-Sierra Leonean border. Regrettably as Liberia became the 11th largest iron-producing country in the world, it also accumulated enormous environmental problems associated with ore mining and other operations that involved the felling of trees in the country’s virgin forestlands.

The fast pace nature of unregulated timber exploitation in the Liberian virgin forests in the 1980s, 1990s, and up to the mid-2000s at the height of the 14-year Liberian civil war from 1989 to 2003 also seriously undermined the Liberian virgin forestlands. Hence, today, after decades of uncoordinated and unregulated rubber, iron ore, coffee, cocoa, and timber operations resulting in chemical wastes, pollution, and mass migration of people to communities catering to these mining operations, Liberia has now lost more than 85% of its virgin productile forest to the concessions. This also means that the land to population ratio of these trees cutting commercial plantations is very high, and poses a major environmental threat to country and its people.

Indeed, if one could take a cursory look at some of the companies that contributed to the growing environmental degradation of Liberia, one is apt to find no less than these 74 companies: Firestone, The Liberia Company, The African Fruit Company, LeTourneau of Liberia, Juan Jesus Ramos Associates Plantations, Maryland Wood Processing Industries, and Woodland Logging Company Oriental Timber Company/NLI, Inland Logging Company, Royal Timber Corporation, United Logging Corporation, Togba Timber Company, The Liberia Operations Inc. , The West African Agricultural Corporation, The B.F. Goodridge Company, The Liberian Agricultural Company / Uniroyal , The Salala Rubber Corporation, Alan L. Grant (Liberia) Inc., Industrial Trading Trust, Liberian Industrial Forestry Corp, Morro River Lumber Corp, Liberian Timber Industries Corp, Siga Lumber Company, Maryland Logging Company, MIM Timber Company, Bolado Sawmill Company, Talk Lumber Company, East Asiatic Company, Lofa Timber Company, Liberian Eastern Timber Company, Cestos Nimba Logging Corp, Liberian Logging & Wood Processing Corp, Lofa-River Cess Lumber Corp, PPP Timber Industries Ltd, Bell Timber Company, Cape Palmas Logging Corp, Dunbar Logging Corp, Liberian-Ivorian Logging Company, Liberian & Overseas Ventures Corp, MACARS Timber Corp, Jlao Enterprises Inc, NACA Enterprises Inc., Tropical Farms Corp., Yah River Logging Corp., International Wood Corp., Liberian Timber Corp., Nimba Logging Corp., Varjan Logging Corp., Associated Liberian Timber Corp., Lofa Lumber Corp., Toweh Logging Corp., Liberian Timber & Plywood Corp. Mohammed Group of Companies, Iberic Liberia Forest Corporation, Cavalla Timber Company, Liberia Wood Management Company/CBI, DGL, DABA , Akari Timber Industry, TUTEX, Xanon Liberia Limited, American Wood Processing Company, FORUM, Forest Hill Corporation, FAPCO, Bureaux Ivorian Ngorian, Tropical Logging Company, GAMMA, RGMM, Tropical Lumber Company, YLII.