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Bui Project - Comments on EIA |
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 An Environmental Impact Assessment for the Bui Dam Project was prepared by Environmental Resources Management in association with SGS Environment. Many of its claims are impossible to verify because the government of Ghana prohibited independent biological research in Bui National Park in 2001. A number of the claims made in the assessment are surprising. One of the most extraordinary claims in the assessment is that "hippopotamus will benefit from the increased area of littoral habitat provided by the reservoir".
Because work on dam construction is now in progress it may seem
superfluous to comment on them. Nevertheless, biologists cannot be
excluded from the area forever, and future investigations will reveal
the extent of the damage.
The bibliography accompanying the EIA (Annex
D) omits in entirety works on the biodiversity of Bui National Park,
most notably the hippopotamus censuses conducted by Paul Choribe, our
paper in the African Journal of Ecology and all of the faunal survey
reports published by the Aberdeen University/Ghana Wildlife' project in
1997. In fact the only works cited on the biodiversity of Bui are
unpublished (and apparently unavailable) reports commissioned by the
Ghanian authorities.
There is some cold comfort in the fact that all our surveys, except the
floral survey, are considerably more extensive than those carried out
for the EIA, and for much less than 1000th of the price. Access the Bui Library here >
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The only obligate fruit-eaters among reptiles are three species of monitor lizard that live in the Philippines. Frugivorous vertebrates tend to be able to fly (almost all are bats and birds) and so these lizards have a unique ecological role as highly specialized and relatively immobile fruit eaters. Before this project started, the only studies of this unique giant and endangered lizard had involved killing the animals. We have developed a set of techniques that allow us to learn about these animals in a completely non-destructive way.