Tropical Africa for fuel exceeds the renewal of forest cover. The rain forests which remain in West Africa now merely are how they were hardly 30 years ago. In Guinea, Liberia and the Ivory Coast, there is almost no primary forest cover left unscathed; in Ghana the situation is much worse, and nearly all the rain forest are cut down. Guinea-Bissau loses 200 to 350 km² of forest yearly, Senegal 500 km² of wooded savanna, and Nigeria 6,000,050,000 of both. Liberia exploits 800 km² of forests each year. Extrapolating from present rates of loss, botanist Peter Raven pictures that the majority of
History of Liberia Leone, and the Natives of Africa generally, in the Cultivation of their Soil, by the Sale of their Produce.” As Wright put it, "Cuffee hoped to send at least one vessel each year to Sierra Leone, transporting African-American settlers and goods to the colony and returning with marketable African products." The first ship, "Mayflower of Liberia" (formerly "Elizabeth"), departed New York on February 6, 1820, for West Africa carrying 86 settlers. Between 1821 and 1838, the American Colonization Society developed the first settlement, which would be known as Liberia. On July 26, 1847, the country declared independence. As early as