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THE ASHANTI Regional Assistant Forest Services Division (FSD) Manager, Mr. Isaac Noble Eshun has said his outfit is logistically constrained in their crusade against illegal felling of tress and mining respectively. He maintained that his outfit does not have the requisite staff and workforce to ensure efficient work in the Ashanti Region. This, he continued, has enabled illegal operators to have a field day in some of the forests. The Chronicle has gathered that the military have turned their back on the Ashanti Regional FSD in complementing its Rapid Forestry Task force, which has been monitoring forest reserves in order to ward off illegal miners and Chainsaw operators in the Ashanti Region. In an interaction with Forestry official at his office in Kumasi, Mr. Eshun indicated that they were handicapped in logistics and security personnel and the absence of these, he said, is stalling their operations to safeguard the forest against chain saw operators and illegal miners. He, however, appealed to the Government to come to assist them with the recruitment of forest guards and logistics including cars among others, to make the Division functional. Mr. Eshun stated that so far as his outfit is concerned no one person or group of persons have been given permit to mine in any forest in the Ashanti Region and dared anybody who claims to have the backing of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Minerals Commission to mine in the forest to come forward to the FSD with documents to that effect for inspection. Mr. Noble Eshun disclosed to The Chronicle that the trend of mitigating illegal mining and chainsaw operations has taken a new trend and called on all and sundry to get on board with this new development of illegal operators encroaching on the forest reserves. He pleaded with chiefs, farmers, hunters and stakeholders to relay any information about illegal mining and chainsaw operation to forestry officers to flush the criminals out of the forests. The Assistant Ashanti Regional FSD Manager urged traditional leaders to help safeguard our forest, saying �we need to protect our trees and water bodies for the incoming generations�.