Sierra Leone

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Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the 15th-century Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who was the first European to see and explore the port of Freetown. The name Serra Lyoa, originally Portuguese for "Lion Mountains", was a reference to the mountain range surrounding the port. Freetown, the capital, is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. While most of the population is involved in subsistence agriculture, Sierra Leone is also a center for mining. Its land is rich in diamonds, gold, bauxite and rutile. The country has been plagued by internal conflict since the late 1980s, which escalated into a brutal civil war between 1991 and 2002. Since the war ended, the Government of Sierra Leone has been faced with the difficult task of rebuilding the country's physical and social infrastructure. Sierra Leone has four terrestrial ecoregions: the Guinean montane forests, the lowland forests of western Guinea, the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic and the Guinean mangrove forests. Up until 2002, the country had no forest management system due to the civil war. Since the end of the civil war, deforestation has increased by 7.3%. In 2003, 55 protected areas were supposed to cover 4.5% of Sierra Leone's land area. In the country, there are about 2090 known plant species, 147 mammal species, 626 bird species, 67 reptile species, 35 amphibian species and 99 fish species. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and BirdLife International agreed in June 2005 to support a conservation-sustainable development project in the Gola Forest in south-eastern Sierra Leone.