Welcome to atewa.org, a website dedicated to providing relevant information pertaining the Atewa Range of Forest Reserve, in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The site is also committed to supporting various campaigns aimed at securing the ecological integrity of the Landscape.

The Atewa Range is a strip of unique upland forest surrounded by a mixture of farms, small scale gold mines and villages. This landscape lies about 90km north of Accra in Ghana.
The forest functions as the source of three important rivers – the Densu, Birim and Ayensu rivers. The Atewa Range supports several communities who live on the forest fringes, as well as being home to a large diversity of plants and animals.
A section of the forest is protected as the Atewa Range Forest Reserve and is recognized as a Global Significant Biodiversity Area.
Despite this status, the forest both inside and outside the Forest Reserve1 is steadily degrading due to timber and non-timber harvesting and the encroachment of farms and gold mines.
This is affecting water flows and water quality and those dependent on water downstream in the three river basins, including businesses, the households of over 1 million people in Accra, as well as local communities and farmers that live around the Forest Reserve.

Atewa forest was a reserve in 1926, upgraded to a Special Biological Protected Area in 1994, a Hill Sanctuary in 1995 and a Globally Significant Biodiversity Area in 1999. In 2001, BirdLife International recognised Atewa Forest as an Important Bird Area. In 2016, the Minister of Land and Natural Resources, Nii Osah Mills, declared the Government’s intention to complete this process of increasing protection, reiterating “the commitment of the Government of Ghana to designate the Atewa Range Forest Reserve as a National Park”.
This commitment was made because the Government recognised the substantial contribution that Atewa Forest makes to both the regional economy and the global biosphere. The loss of the Atewa Forest will cause a devastating impact on the economy as well as the biosphere.