Forest Service trains communities on forest management

The government has enhanced training of communities on Forest Management Agreements as the country rushes to realise 30 per cent tree cover by 2032.

The Kenya Forest Service senior deputy chief conservator Charity Munyasya said they have rolled out training to partners so as to add more knowledge to all key players.

She said since 2005 when the Community Forests Associations were formed, they had grown with officials and members being enlightened in bits on forestry issues.

“The CFA members have never let us down. When they were formed, some did not know anything about forestry, but the trainings to enlighten them have helped them a lot. They have grown so much, they can teach, they now understand the need to protect forests, trees and the environment” she said.

Munyasya was speaking on Saturday when she closed a week-long training on Participatory Forest Management (PFM) dubbed 'National Dialogue with CFA members', and attended by CFA members drawn from different regions of the country.

The KFS had partnered with the National Alliance of Community Forest Associations (NACOFA), Nature Kenya and Kenya Forestry Research Institute to enlighten the CFA.

Munyasya said this was aimed at increasing knowledge of PFM and partnerships to the community and assess the state of CFA governance together with the status of the implementation of the Participatory Forest Management Plans (PFMPs) and Forest Management Agreements (FMA).

Nearly all forests have CFAs which signed the PFMP and FMAs between them and the KFS last month.

The senior deputy CCF also noted that KFS is fully committed to supporting CFAs considering the vital role they play in the protection and conservation of Kenya’s ecosystems.

In order to achieve President William Ruto’s directive of attaining 30 per cent tree cover by 2032, the KFS officer revealed that they had doubled their target area of reforestation from 5.1 million hectares to 10.6 million hectares.

During the dialogue session, the CFA’s were urged to determine their own targets in planting of 15 billion trees especially in increasing their tree seedling propagation.

John Njagi, a CFA member from Uplands forest in Kiambu county, said they had planted seedlings to ensure they have sustained trees in the forest within one year.

Njagi said they decided to do that so that Ruto’s directive may not fail since it was aimed at improving the environment.

"Our CFA has seedbeds. As we benefit from the forests, we help the government to plant more trees, protect trees and its vegetation, to report incidences which we cannot control as well as planting seedbeds from seeds that can do well from our region so as to sustain their growth,” he said.