Settlers join drive to save Mau

Kenya Forest Service has started a tree-planting drive in which Mau Complex settlers will participate in a bid to restore the water tower.

The agency seeks to employ youth to plant trees on more than 500 hectares of the depleted forest under the Kazi Kwa Vijana programme.

According to the forest service Nakuru zonal manager James Gitonga, private companies, including Timsales Limited, have offered to rehabilitate 200 hectares. NGOs and companies such as Kenya Breweries, Equity Bank and Nation Media Group have volunteered to take part in the Mau conservation initiative.

Mr Gitonga said local communities living around Kiptunga, Marioshoni and Elburgon Forest Station within the 400,000-hectare Mau Complex would sell tree seedlings to KFS. A cross-section of MPs and other opinion leaders, alongside their supporters, boycotted last week’s national tree planting ceremony commissioned by Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Kiptunga Forest.

Timber factory

They claimed they were not consulted in the planning of the event. According to Timsales operations manager Walter Ogada, their timber factory in Elburgon had joined the Mau conservation campaign by rehabilitating 2,443 hectares since 2001 in plantation forests.

He said among the exotic tree plantations so far covered were those in Molo, Koibatek, Kuresoi, Baraget, Kiptunga and Marioshoni forests where a total of 5 million trees were planted, he added.

A spot check at their Tarakwet tree nursery established that there were 1.3 million seedlings being propagated for this season. One hundred employees were busy tending the young plants before being transplanted to the designated forest land.

“We operate under annual licensing by KFS and pay requisite royalties before removal of the harvested trees. It takes up to 30 years for a single tree to mature in commercial forests of exotic species, namely, pine, cypress and eucalyptus,” Mr Ogada said.

Timsales is among three other major timber companies licensed by the government to harvest trees around the country since a partial ban on logging was imposed in 1999.

Lift the ban

The government has in the recent past pledged to lift the ban following agitation by local saw millers, who claim that trees worth Sh3.3 billion were going to waste in commercial tree plantations because the licensed firms were overwhelmed by the mature stock.

The Timber Manufacturing Association has also come forward to support the Mau conservation initiative and have sought to replenish 250 hectares of the water tower so that their more than 300 members who were put out of business could be brought on board.