Monrovia, March 7 -- A truck with chewing sticks parked near an open field. Some of the sticks lay on the ground. It had been parked for three weeks in Barlome Town on the Grand Bassa-River Cess highway. The sticks had been transported from Nimba County and uploaded there.

By Emmanuel Sherman, with The DayLight

"I am waiting for my boss," said Obed Amoah, an attendant to the 37-ton truck with Ghanaian license plate GR-5774.

Reporters had happened upon a major player in the shadowy world of chewing stick trafficking. In 2021, the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) imposed a moratorium on chewing sticks to curtail the clearcutting of the species. However, The DayLight found evidence, that the FDA has been issuing chewing stick permit...