Shagarab land will change into desert by refugees, El-Griba locality, Kassala state, Sudan.

The study explores the complex relationships between land cover, environmental change and malpractices of refugees and to identify the nature of environmental impact on the area. The study concludes that change in land cover caused by the presence of refugees is a major cause for concern in this area. At the same time, observed changes in land cover need to be treated with caution, given the often cycle nature of environmental change, and the range of factors associated with it. During the thirty years the vegetation cover changed due to the continuous deforestation. The area of Shagarab changes to bare area, no trees and shrubs and few of unpalatable plants. Lack of charcoal, fuel wood and building materials. That is transported from far distances from Basunda South of Gedaref town and East from Wad-ElHelio. The objectives of this research are to identify the size of deterioration in the area due to the activities of refugees that are: over grazing, cutting down of trees for cooking and building grass huts and to appeal to the international organizations to rehabilitate and combate the desertified area. In order to estimate the cutting down of trees, area cleared for establishing the camp, cultivation, housing, renovation, consumption of firewood and charcoal using the statistical archival methods done by COR (1988), UNHCR and FNC (2003) and Tom (2004). Also the governmental officials staff of National Forest Corporation and organizational officials staff of rehabilitated areas affected by refugees activities were interviewed. The result revealed that the total area cleared for housing was 1540.6 ha. While the total cutting down of trees for building and renovation of the huts were 3704540 trees. On the other hand the total consumption of the whole period from firewood was 642490 cubic meters and the charcoal was 6630880 sacks. From the calculation it is obvious that the damage of forest was very serious in the area. The study found out that the damaged on the natural forest resulted in removal of huge number of trees from land. The area became opened then it was exposed to erosion by rainwater and wind. K e y w o r d s