Forest squatters blamed for woes

By Amos Kareithi, Daily Nation Sept 14, 2002

An estimated 30,000 families are now living as squatters around the vast Mt Kenya ecosystem following the scrapping of the non-residential cultivation shamba system by the Government.

As a result of the huge squatter populations on the peripheries of the mountain, says the Chief Conservator of Forests, Mr G N Gathara, conservation of the huge forest has become very difficult.

Under the shamba system, farmers were allocated small portions of land where they planted food crops as they tended the trees and participated in re-afforestation programmes.

But the biggest problem to conserve the forest has been blamed on bhang growers and poachers.

Gathara said problems over the vast forest are not localised on one district but affected the entire mountain area. It covers 213,000 hectares and extends to lower and upper Imenti and Thunguru hills.

He said the conservation of Mt Kenya's ecosystem has been confronted by many problems which are frustrating whatever achievements conservators have made. The degradation of Mt Kenya, which acts as the major catchment area for the country, he warned, has led to water shortages which affected a lot of people. He was particularly concerned by the decline of forest cover due to excisions, unsustainable exploitation of forest products as well as cultivation of bhang.

He added that his department was addressing the threats that have contributed to degradation of the ecosystem. "It has been recognised that the management of natural resources within the context of sustainable development is more effective when local communities whose livelihoods are sustained by the same resources have a meaningful role in it," he said.

In a speech read on his behalf by Luke Njuguna during the commissioning of Sagana electric fence in Nyeri, Gathara said that in future local communities directly benefiting from forests will be involved in its management. He said that as a result of the havoc occasioned by wild animals on settled areas in Sagana, local residents have suffered a lot.