Refugees consumption of Forest Products prior to Repatriation Kuna Zeberma Camp, Kassab Locality, Gedaref State

The refugees depend entirely on forest for building materials, firewood and charcoal. The damage of forest near refugees camp was very severe. Refugees activities disturbed the environment through the removal of a lot of trees as building materials, firewood, charcoal, clearing the land for agriculture and establishing the camp and housing and renovation. The objectives the of research are to assess total cutting down of trees, consumption of firewood and charcoal and clearing land for establishing the camp and rehabilitating the degraded area. The archival methods done by the legal authorities were used for the calculation of the total area subjected to removal of trees and consumption of firewood and charcoal. For example, each family is allotted t hree huts and renovates every five years. Area allotted for agriculture was 4.2 ha per family. Number of trees cut down for building one hut was 60 trees. Two cubic meters of firewood is the consumption of household every year. One ha produces 168 cubic meters of firewood. Each refugee s family is supplied with two sacks of charcoal per month. One cubic meter of woods produce three sacks of charcoal. The result revealed that the total area cleared for housing and agriculture was 13584 ha, which is equivalent to 868096 trees. While the cutting down of trees for building and the renovation of the huts were 1693980 trees. On the other hand the total consumption of whole period from firewood was 75288 cubic meters and the charcoal was 903456 sacks. From the calculation it is obvious that the damage of forest was very serious in the area. K e y w o r d s Area, Firewood, Natural forest, Refugees and Trees