The West Mamprusi District is bordered by the White Volta River on its northern side. The river together with the Red Volta and the Morago Rivers to the north and east respectively of the district are all bordered by government gazetted forest reserves which serves as international corridors for the movement of biodiversity, particularly elephants, between Burkina Faso, Ghana and northern Togo. The White Volta River also flows westwards and is joined by the Kulpaum River, which runs along the northern border of Ghana?s largest wildlife park ? the Mole National Park. The protection of these riverine forests will reduce the trend of habitat fragmentation and help maintain a contiguous chain of riverine forests stretching from the middle Northern Region to the northeastern corner of Ghana and link up to Burkina Faso and northern Togo. SGP Ghana has identified habitat fragmentation as one of the major threats to the survival of faunal biodiversity. This is because the ?biodiversity islands? that will be created by fragmentation will each be too small to support their populations and inbreeding will occur leading to the collapse of the populations.
The project worked with 22 communities fringing the White Volta River Forest Reserve to reduce encroachment and forest degradation and assist them to practice ecologically friendly food production and livelihood generation alternatives such as beekeeping, groundnut and sheabutter extraction, and improved animal husbandry. Women were also taught to construct and use Fuel Efficient Woodsaving Stoves and are now cultivating Jatropha curcas for oil that will be used to power the diesel mills of oil extraction. The project has commissioned an Alternative Livelihood Resource Centre with three mills for extracting shea butter and ground oils.