Qualla: Atewa Range Forest Reserve

Atewa Range Forest Reserve: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aymatth2, Public domain. In October 2021, two British scientists working in a Ghanaian forest heard a call that no researcher had recorded in the country for nearly 150 years. Shelley's eagle-owl, enormous and elusive, was staring back at them from the canopy of the Atewa Range. The bird's rediscovery was not a fluke of luck but a consequence of where it was found: a 17,400-hectare block of upland evergreen forest in southeastern Ghana so biologically rich that scientists keep finding species science has never described, or had given up for lost. The Atewa Range Forest Reserve sits near the town of Kibi, southwest of the Kwahu Plateau and the vast surface of Lake Volta. Its steep-sided hills with flat summits are the last surviving remnant of a Cenozoic peneplain, a geological surface that once stretched across all of southern Ghana.

Image: Aymatth2 | Public domain

Atewa Range Forest Reserve: Where Three Rivers Begin

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5. Three major rivers are born in the Atewa Range. The Ayensu and Densu flow south toward the Atlantic coast, supplying water to communities and agriculture along the way. The Birim takes a longer, more circuitous route, looping north and southwest around the range before joining th...

Image: Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum | CC BY-SA 2.5

Atewa Range Forest Reserve: A Catalog of the Unseen

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5. The numbers alone make the case. More than 1,000 plant species grow in the reserve, many found nowhere else in Ghana. Over 230 bird species have been recorded, earning the range designation as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. The butterfly count exceeds 570 speci...

Image: Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum | CC BY-SA 2.5

Atewa Range Forest Reserve: Bauxite Against Biodiversity

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5. Beneath the forest floor lie deposits of low-grade bauxite and gold, and these have placed the reserve at the center of one of West Africa's most consequential conservation battles. In 2017, Ghana signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese state-owned Sinohydro Corpora...

Image: Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum | CC BY-SA 2.5

Atewa Range Forest Reserve: Peneplain at the Precipice

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5. What makes the Atewa Range irreplaceable is not any single species but its geological identity. A peneplain is a nearly flat erosional surface, the result of millions of years of weathering that levels mountains into plateaus. The one that once covered southern Ghana has been ero...

Image: Robert Nash, Curator of Entomology,Ulster Museum | CC BY-SA 2.5