LUANDA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Angola, which rivals Nigeria as the largest oil producer in Africa, has manifested a strong interest to develop eco-tourism by preserving bio-diversity to reduce its dependence on oil revenues in the national economy.
In a speech to mark the June 5 World Environment Day, Angolan Minister of Environment Maria de Fatima said her country was in a bad need to diversify its economy and plan for the future, and was taking efforts to restore its elephant population, preserving bio-diversity as part of the environment protection to turn itself into "a new Angola".
The development of eco-tourism figured high on the agenda of the Angolan government which was aching for a solution to an economic crises triggered by the falling and stagnant international oil prices, which stood at around 50 U.S. dollars a barrel in recent weeks as against 104 dollars in the third quarter of 2014.
Currently Angola was in a sub-regional cooperation with Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and zimbabwe to crack down upon illegal traficking in wildlife products and to protect the ecological environment of the sub-region which was the main habitat of elephants in Africa, according to Achim Staina, Excutive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, who was in Angola to attend events to mark the World Environment Day.
Many of Angola's flora and fauna had been damaged in decades of armed conflicts which ended in 2002, and currently poaching stll posed a grave threat to the ecology of the African country, which was also a transit point of the illegal international trafficking of wildlife products, and ivory products were smuggled mostly from DR Congo into Angola before selling to end consumers in other countries.
The Angolan government had closed a major wildlife product market earlier this year in the Benfica district in southern Luanda and vowed to crack down on poaching to preserve the bio-diversity of the country.
The government also doubled in recent years the territory of natural reserves to protect species of flora and fauna mostly threatened with extinction.
