The cost is slightly less than one US dollar, but in a country where the lowest-paid workers earn only about 800 Zimbabwean dollars a month, the expense is crippling. A day's worth of firewood runs to about 20 dollars, and even large bundles rarely top 80 dollars, buyers around Harare said. But then you have to clean the pots very hard, they get very dirty. With paraffin or an electric stove, they stay cleaner. Forestry officials said they had no estimates of exactly how many trees are being felled or how much land is affected.
Environmentalists say hundreds of thousands of trees have been chopped down.
The ecological balance is going to be affected. We are going to have a desert in Zimbabwe. The squatters cut down trees to build homes, to cook with, and for heating during the southern winter. Police have largely refused to act against the squatters, which has created large swaths of land where anyone can cut down trees without fear of arrest. Some local leaders have started handing out their own punishments.