Efforts to reverse challenges facing Kakamega Forest have gained traction, with players calling for close collaboration.
As Kenya’s only tropical rainforest, the Kakamega forest is a critical heritage and natural resource.
In addition, the forest plays a vital role as a critical watershed and a carbon capture system, contributing to climate change mitigation.
For decades, however, Kakamega forest has been shrinking largely due to logging, harvesting of medicinal resources and agricultural expansion.
Currently, the forest, including reserves, encloses about 238 square kilometres, a little less than half remains indigenous.
The Conservation Alliance of Kenya, in partnership with the State Department for Forestry, the State Department for Environment and Climate Change and the State Department for Wildlife, organised a forum on Tuesday to discuss the state of conservation of the Kakamega forest and its landscape.
The forum, titled, the Sustainable conservation of the Kakamega forest landscapes and its fragile ecosystems seeks to find a unified way of conserving the forest.
It brought together state officials, communities and stakeholders with conservation initiatives in Kakamega forest.
Wildlife PS Silvia Museiya praised the conservation efforts and urged the groups to put more attention on plant species.
“We don’t speak enough about tree species unless they are listed under IUCN and other sites. Most of our budgets and funds go to take care of human wildlife conflict, rhino sanctuaries, or the big five, but we need to look into fauna," she said.
"I also urge you to put more conservation efforts in other regions with less attention, like Baringo and West Pokot.”
Conservation Alliance of Kenya CEO Steve Itela said it is important to formulate a master plan that will coordinate the conservation and preservation of the forest.
“Kakamega forest was once larger than what we are seeing now and it went all the way to Nandi county. But it has been greatly reduced over time due to human activities," he said.
"As organisations working towards its restoration, we are moving from a silo mentality to collectively working together to prevent the duplication of projects and conserve the forest.”
Kakamega Forest Heritage Foundation chairman Johnson Murila joined calls for collaborations to restore the forest.
In the past five years, the Kakamega Forest Heritage Foundation has rehabilitated 140 acres of the forest with 112,000 indigenous trees.
"There are many of us working in the forest as little individual teams. It will be great if we all came up with a conservation plan for the whole ecosystem to work towards one goal, outing our resources and synergies in one direction, because this will give us much better results," Murila said.
"With this, we can make the forest great again and hopefully reverse some of the effects of climate change.”
The conservationists also called for sharing of information on the forest's research findings for proper action.
“The forest has attracted a lot of research but unfortunately it is donor driven and sectoral and the issue is how do to bring these projects together?" asked National Museums of Kenya Principle Research Scientist Beatrice Khayota.
"We have many experts who know what is useful to the forest and it’s important that the scientists share these reports and bring the community on board to ensure they learn how to use the forest resources to their advantage.”
