Farmers in Nyeri have been asked to take advantage of the ongoing rains by establishing woodlots on their pieces of land. Nyeri County Ecosystem Conservator Mr. Moses Wahome said the government has tasked officers from both the Kenya Forest Service and the Ministry of Interior to coordinate the distribution of tree seedlings to the public in order to streamline the process. The officer however, said the seedlings will only be distributed in areas where there is enough moisture retention to reduce the risk of losing the saplings to harsh weather conditions. ‘We are working hand in hand with our assistant chiefs at the village level to ensure members of the public can be assisted on how they can access our offices to get seedlings for planting. However, our main focus is to give out seedlings to farmers residing in areas that have received sufficient rains. We do not wish to give out seedlings that will end up dying out within days due to lack of enough moisture build up,’ said Wahome. The officer cited Kieni as among sub counties that KFS has started distributing the seedlings after the area witnessed heavy rains within the last two weeks. He has also clarified that the government is issuing both indigenous and exotic tree seedling varieties that also include fruit bearing trees. Nyeri County is targeting to increase its forest cover from the current 40.89 per cent to 43 per cent by the year 2027. During celebrations to mark this year’s International Day of Forests held at Kabaru Forest, Water Irrigation, Environment and Climate Change County Executive Committee Member (CECM) Mr. Fredrick Kinyua disclosed that his department was keen on supporting the government attain its target of planting 15 billion trees by 2032. Kinyua similarly noted that with the increased forest cover, the county would be best placed to combat the erratic weather patterns being experienced in the country due to climate change. ‘We cannot talk about tackling food security, water shortage or climate change without speaking about protecting our forests. The solution to the problems we are currently facing can be resolved by taking care of our forests and planting more trees,’ said the officer during the event. ‘We are still implementing the 10 million trees challenge with the help of our schools which will help Kenya Forest Service and Community Forest Associations propagate seedlings. So as to ensure that we do not just plant trees, we are encouraging the learners in those schools to each adopt a tree so that they can care for the trees until they reach maturity. Our goal is to hit the 45 per cent mark in the next five years,’ added Kinyua. According to the National Forest Resources Assessment Report the country’s forest cover stands at 8.83 per cent. Nyeri County has three times the nationally recommended 10 per cent forest cover and a tree cover of 45.17 per cent. On the delicate issue of lifting the ban on logging, Wahome declined to comment on the matter stating that it was a policy issue and therefore beyond his jurisdiction. He therefore said as far as he was concerned, the moratorium on logging still stands until the State gives a contrary directive. ‘The issue of lifting the ban on logging on our forests is a policy matter that I do not wish to comment on. Right now, we have not received any circular in regard to the ban on logging and therefore I wish to leave the matter there until such a time a policy statement is issued,’ he explained. The State imposed a ban on logging on February 24 2018 which effectively restricted the extraction of timber from all public and community forests. During the last financial year, Nyeri County KFS office collected Sh24,639,806.50 as revenue against a targeted figure of Sh 40 million owing to restriction on the sale of forest produce. The existing moratorium was arrived at following the findings of a task force that had been constituted by the government to inquire into forest resource management and logging activities in the country. The task force found out that the board and the management of KFS had been unable to ‘stem and in some instances has directly participated in, abated and systematized rampant corruption and abuse of office in undertaking harvesting of forest products’. Forest plantations currently cover at least 335,000 acres in all gazetted reserves of Kenya including the Mount Kenya, Aberdare, Mau Forest Complex, Cherangani Hills and Mt Elgon. In 2019, saw millers across the country had raised concern over the ban on logging, saying trees worth billions of shillings were rotting in the government forests and in the process denying Treasury at least 30 billion shillings annually in lost revenue.

Source: Kenya News Agency