Between Sierra Leone and Liberia, there is a small strip of land belonging to Guinea known as the "Parrot's Beak." As civil wars raged in Sierra Leone and Liberia, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to relative safety in Guinea, many of them settling in the Parrot's Beak. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that the refugee population constitutes up to 80 per cent of the local population there (UNEP 2000). Overall impoverishment of the environment of the Parrot's Beak is directly related to the rapidly increasing population in the area, mainly due to immigration, and a growth rate of about three per cent among the indigenous population. Natural resources are being exploited to create more arable land for crops, wood for charcoal, firewood and construction materials, and commercial logging for revenue.