Mau Forest Complex is an ecosystem providing homeland to many communities and a wide range of biodiversity. Over the last decade, the highland forests of the Mau Complex have been heavily impacted by new settlements, tree cutting and forest excisions. This project supports traditional forms of sustainable forest management and sustainable livelihoods within the Ogiek People’s Ancestral Territories in Eastern Mau.

Mau Forest Complex is referred to as one of the five major water towers of Kenya. It forms the upper catchment of Kenya’s main rivers west of the Rift Valley. These rivers include the river Njoro and Makalia which drain into Lake Nakaru; Sondu, Yala, Nzoia and Nyando rivers, all flowing into Lake Victoria, as well as the Ewaso Ngiro, Kerio and Mara rivers.

In addition it supplies water to many of the lakes of the Rift Valley, from Lake Turkana bordering Ethiopia to Lake Natron in Tanzania, which is the only regular breeding site for the more than two million flamingos found on the Rift Valley lakes of Eastern Africa.

Project Needs

Since the early 1990s, clear-felling and burning inside the gazetted forests to make room for cultivation has had a disastrous effect on forest cover. To date, the clearing of forest continues unabated. Clearing natural forests for agriculture and charcoal burning, to meet the needs for firewood in towns and cities like Nakuru, are the main causes of forest destruction. There is an urgent need to halt this process and protect the catchment forests.

Objective

• The main aim of this project is to restore selected deforested and degraded areas within the Eastern Mau catchment area. This project will serve as a demonstration of one of the possible mitigation measures to curb forest destruction for future community-led reforestation activities in the highlands.

Activities

Build local capacities for the management and conservation of forest resources through training, provision of equipment and other activities; establishment of demonstration reforestation plots, at priority conservation sites, combined with educational or income generation activities; promote community awareness-raising on forest preservation through tree planting events and environmental education among forest users.

Beneficiaries

The Ogiek, who numbers around 20,000, are the largest indigenous hunter-gatherer community in Kenya. The projects also targets other local communities who partly or wholly derive their livelihood from the forests. Most importantly, the activities are envisioned to create a sense of responsibility, ownership and awareness within the local communities of their role in safeguarding the forests and the watershed.