Watch out! Disaster looming for Kenya

Politicians cared little about the burning of East Africa’s largest forest – until the lights in Nairobi started going out

The largest forest in East Africa acts as a water tower for an otherwise arid land, feeding its lakes and rivers, regulating the climate and refreshing its underground acquifers. But an epic drought has plunged Kenya into an ecological crisis and its dried up rivers can no longer turn the blades of the hydro-electric turbines. Power rationing is switching off the lights in the capital Nairobi for days at a time.
Which means the fate of the forest has finally caught the attention of Kenya’s warring politicians who have vowed to evict the “squatters” from the Mau. While they argue over land claims and compensation demands, Maina and hundreds like him are finishing the job of killing the forest. “The politicians have their own land,” Maina says with a scowl. “Now they want to move the poor people so they can take our land.”

Turqa Jirmo, a senior warden with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), is heading a task force set up last year to save the forest. He still hasn’t recovered from his first task which was to fly over the land for four days to assess the damage. “I was amazed. I never believed the destruction had gone so far. I couldn’t see the forest because of the charcoal smoke coming from the ground.”

Charts on his office wall map out the complexity of 12 forest blocks that make up the Mau’s 400,000 hectares. Mr Jirmo estimates as much as 40 per cent of it has already been destroyed. The challenge of saving what’s left is complicated by illegal loggers or “wood poachers” as he calls them; a flourishing illegal charcoal trade, and the deeply politicised issue of the settlers. The green lines of the protected areas on his maps are marked with red zones where past governments have doled out woodlands to their supporters in a blatant example of land for votes.

The Independent