Illegal miners cleared from forest reserves keep returning to the same sites with new equipment, prompting the Forestry Commission to change its approach to tackling illegal mining, the Western Regional Manager of the Commission, Nana Poku Bosompim, has said.
He said the Commission has moved from periodic raids and withdrawals to maintaining permanent, round-the-clock camps in affected forest reserves to prevent illegal miners from returning after officers leave.
“We see new changfan machines every day. You burn them, and they keep bringing [them] in,” Nana Poku said in an interview on TV3’s Key Points programme on Saturday (August 8, 2026).
He said illegal miners who were removed from one part of a forest reserve often moved to another area and returned to previously cleared sites after officers had left.
“You go to this particular forest reserve, flush the people out, destroy the machinery, and they move to another forest,” he said. “They know for sure that we are not going to be there 24 hours, seven times a week.”
Nana Poku was speaking about an eight-day operation at the Cape Three Points Forest Reserve in the Western Region, during which he said 125 changfan machines and 202 industrial water pumps were destroyed. The operation also led to the arrest of 41 people and the destruction of 59 makeshift camp structures.
Of the 41 people arrested, he said four of them were women who were picked up in the forest after 2 a.m.
Nana Poku said 27 of those arrested have been remanded by a Circuit Court in Takoradi, with the remaining suspects expected to appear before the court from Monday.
Nana Poku said the Commission has started establishing permanent camps inside the Cape Three Points Forest Reserve.
