Sierra Leone, with a total land area of 71,325 km², is one of the smallest countries in coastal West Africa. Its relatively small area is endowed, however, with natural riches that include mineral resources and biodiversity. The natural vegetation includes lowland moist and semi-deciduous forests, which constitute the westernmost extent of West Africa's Upper Guinea ecosystem, as well as inland valley swamps, bolilands and wooded savannah. Ten major rivers form the drainage systems, flowing southwest and roughly parallel, from the northern uplands to the extensive mangrove swamps along the coast. The wildlife is typical of the Upper Guinea ecosystem with a few locally endemic species, but with numerous species that find their westernmost range in Sierra Leone.

As in most other countries in West Africa, loss of biodiversity in Sierra Leone has been a major concern since the early 1960s, and has been documented in numerous studies (e.g., Lowes, 1970; Myers, 1975; Phillipson, 1978; Oates, 1980; Teleki, 1980; and Davies, 1987). The threat is manifested by various negative impacts, which can be summarized as follows:

• Loss of unique habitats for wildlife within ecosystems. The loss of biodiversity in a country runs parallel with the loss of such "specialized" habitats, which are destroyed as the vegetation is removed;
• Loss of genetic resources and wild types for improving biotechnology; tissue culture, crossbreeding, genetic engineering, and pest control; and
• Loss of plant resources with medicinal potential to combat diseases and improve human livelihoods.

Most of the forested land in the country now is in forest reserves. Even these have been, and continue to be, used for timber production. It is estimated that at present 3.9 percent of the country is forest reserves, and 2.3 percent of forest reserves is rain forest. In the Eastern Province, more than 20,037 hectares had been exploited for commercial timber by 1980 (i.e., 13 percent of forested reserves in the province), and a further 1,710 hectares had been lost to farmers (Kernan, 1980). These figures would obviously have increased with time as population increases create more demand for agricultural lands together with other unsustainable exploitations. The ten-year-old civil war in the country has tended to accelerate these processes through inter alia disruption of conservation activities, intensified and unsustainable resource exploitation, and breakdown in law and order.

The integrity of reserves must be maintained if complete loss of the evergreen forest resources is to be avoided. In some cases like the Tama and Tonkolili reserves, farmers had already made considerable encroachments before timber was extracted (Kernan, 1980). Uncontrolled exploitation of the resource base needs to be replaced by rational management of all forest resources (Forestry Department, 1985), if the full potential of the forest resources is to be realized. Forestry and forest conservation in Sierra Leone has the potential to make a major contribution to the process of feeding the nation directly and indirectly by meeting the basic needs of the rural poor, sustaining industries that provide employment and income, and maintaining the environmental stability needed for the continued production of food.