Abstract
SUMMARY This paper assess the effectiveness of forest regulations applied between 1900 and 1990 in Ghana’s permanent forest reserves at ensuring a future crop of marketable trees by relating forest regulation to historical data on timber exploitation and forest inventory data. During the study period, the commercial species list steadily increased from 3 to 66 species, felling diameter limits and cutting cycles changed several times. Average densities of commercial stems in residual forests in 1989 followed a negative exponential curve, but with lower than expected recruitment into the 40-60 cm dbh class and relatively high densities of smaller sized trees. At the species level, heavily exploited species and light demanding pioneer species deviated from a balanced distribution. Patterns in exploitation, either in number of species or total stems removed, were unrelated to the application of harvesting regulations, milling capacity and political instability may have played a larger role. Results suggest that the harvest regulations, as applied in the past and those in place, are unlikely to sustain timber production.
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