ABSTRACT
The vegetation of Sierra Leone is determined by natural features such as geography, geology, and topography. The country is divided into four topographic regions, namely, the coastal lowland, the interior plains, the interior plateau and scattered mountains and hills. The livelihood of the rural population in Sierra Leone, as in most countries in Africa and Asia, incorporate natural resources and high diversity, regardless of whether the agro-ecosystems are based on permanent cropping, predominantly pastoral or mixed. Sierra Leone exhibits reasonable diversity within existing animal species. The animal diversity can be broadly categorized into invertebrate and vertebrate animals. The main ecozones in Sierra Leone can be divided into two broad categories: terrestrial and aquatic. Biological diversity in Sierra Leone is faced with diverse threats and the range of activities constituting major threats to biodiversity include poaching of fauna and inadequate valuation of natural resources, forest exploitation, agriculture, fishing, energy exploitation, mining, urbanization, and waste disposal.
