George Ankomah wraps his hand around a skinny mahogany tree. This one, he says, isn't doing so well — he thinks it was planted too close to other trees that take more than their share of the sunlight, and maybe the nutrients in the soil aren't so good. But, he says, it's all part of learning.

The tree is still a baby, planted four years ago. And what Ankomah, technical officer with the Lake Bosumtwi reforestation project, is learning is how to transform a scrubby patch of depleted forest to the natural tropical growth that was once here.