Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Author: Ange Aboa
Ivorian security forces have driven thousands of cocoa farmers out of a national park this week at the start of an operation to preserve the refuge for endangered chimpanzees and forest elephants, a government source and locals said on Thursday.
Mont Peko is one of a few dwindling patches of rainforest in Ivory Coast, but some 28,000 illegal farmers are growing cocoa there, many of them destitute migrants from Burkina Faso with few other means of making a living.
"Thousands of farmers have been fleeing the forest since the day before yesterday. More are coming to the village every hour," said Alphonse Kapo, who lives in the village of Bagohoua, next to the park.
A government source who declined to be named confirmed the operation was under way.