The Tano River is one of Ghana's most sacred and historically significant rivers — the great western waterway of the Akan world, flowing some 400 km from the highlands near Techiman in the Bono East Region down through Ashanti and the Western North Region to empty into the Aby Lagoon at the Ghana–Côte d'Ivoire border. **The river itself.** The Tano (also called Tanoe) rises in the hills north-east of Techiman and runs south-west, passing near Goaso, Sefwi Wiawso and Enchi before reaching the coast at the lagoon system near Elubo and the Ivorian frontier. Its major tributaries include the Bia and the Sura. For the Akan — especially the Bono, Asante and the Sefwi/Anyi/Baoulé peoples — the Tano is not merely water: it is **Tano, the river deity**, one of the most powerful abosom in Akan religion, associated with the sky god Nyame's children and revered as a source of purification, oath-taking and spiritual authority. Priests of Tano (Tano akomfo) are found across Bono, Ashanti and the Western North. **The forest reserves.** The Tano basin threads through some of Ghana's richest remaining high forest, largely within the **Western North Region** and the **Bono East/Ashanti fringes**. Key protected areas include: - **Tano-Offin Forest Reserve** — in the Ashanti Region near the Offin headwaters, an important watershed and biodiversity reserve. - **Tano Suraw / Tano Suhien Forest Reserves** — in the Western North, protecting stretches of the Tano's upper and middle course. - **Bia National Park and Bia Resource Reserve** — on the Bia tributary near the Ivorian border, one of Ghana's most biologically important protected areas (forest elephant, bongo, chimpanzee). - **Ankasa Conservation Area** — further south-west, contiguous with the Tano/Aby lagoon wetlands and Ivorian forests. - **Boabeng-Fiema** and other sacred groves in the broader Bono–Ashanti forest belt, where traditional protection reinforces formal conservation. **Why it matters.** The Tano basin is a biodiversity hotspot — home to forest elephants, chimpanzees, bongo antelope, over 200 bird species and rare butterflies — and it is the lifeline for cocoa, timber and fishing communities across the Western North. It is also under serious pressure: illegal logging, galamsey (small-scale mining), cocoa-farm expansion and charcoal burning have degraded large stretches of the reserves, and the Tano itself has suffered from pollution and reduced flow. **Cultural weight.** In Akan tradition, to swear by the Tano is among the most binding oaths; the river is regarded as a living ancestor-deity who punishes perjury and injustice. The annual **Tano festival** among Bono and Sefwi communities honours the deity and renews the community's covenant with the river. If you want, I can go deeper on any single reserve (Bia, Tano-Offin, Ankasa), on the Tano deity's place in Akan religion, or on the current state of galamsey and conservation efforts in the Western North — just say which.