Deforestation Forcing Blackouts In Nairobi: Kenyan Politicians Suddenly Favor Forest Protection

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Under a slate-grey sky Francis Maina is hunched over a tree stump. He secures a rusted chain around it and signals for the tractor to start hauling. The blackened base of the mature hardwood is wrenched from the earth like a tooth from a jaw. As he works, the nearby standing forest soaks up a gentle afternoon rain, pulling it into the soil. In Maina's razed field the water runs down the cratered hillside in channels of black mud. The 60-year-old farm labourer stands in the midst of an ecological rape scene: scorched earth scattered with the burnt stumps of centuries-old trees. He is one of thousands of Kenyans who have settled inside this supposedly protected forest that stretches from the Mau escarpment down to the Maasai plains and up to the central highlands.

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.

While the politicians haggle over compensation in their Nairobi offices lit by petrol generators, speculators are using the hiatus to slash and burn as much profit as they can ahead of possible evictions. In February, the Mau complex was engulfed in flames, with an inferno that destroyed thousands of hectares and burned for four days. "People deliberately set the fire," Mr Jirmo remembers. "There are confusing signals from the politicians and people are trying to harvest as much of the forest before the government can evict them." The head of the Mau task force sees any failure in his mission in the starkest terms. "The forest is a lifeline for Kenya. Without it Kenya has no future."

The disaster is already present in Lake Nakuru, renowned for its spectacular flamingoes. The two rivers that feed the lake have dried up and the KWS is having to pump water from deep underground to keep the animals alive. Kenya's vital tourist industry would buckle, he warns, as already the spectacle of the Great Wildebeest Migration has been ruined by the historically low levels of the Mara river. World-famous parks, like Kenya's Masai Mara and Tanzania's Serengeti would also be at risk.

EDIT

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/watch-out-disaster-looming-for-kenya-1776497.html