KFS to involve communities in conserving forests

The Kenya Forest Service (KFS) has announced its plans to increase the number of forest rangers to help in the protection and management of forests.

Admitting there was a shortage of the officers, Chief Conservator of Forests Julius Kamau, however, disclosed that they are not relying much on them in protection of these resources against exploitation but instead the local communities.

Kamau said they are now adopting other best practices like the involvement of communities living around the forests to help in the conservation process.

He said with the local communities being involved, the need for having many rangers would be insignificant.

“We must change our ways of doing things, we must create a good relations with them so that they can be part of this process because without engagement with them our conservation efforts will become difficult,” the officer said.

But, without divulging more on this, Kamau noted that there were plans to increase the numbers and equip the existing rangers in all the forest stations.

Kamau made the revelation during the signing of a participatory forest management plan for conservation of Chepalungu forest at the Kapchumbe block in Sotik.

He stated that KFS has so far developed 165 forest management plans with 112 agreements having been signed so far.

The pacts, he said, will provide roadmaps on how government managed forests are going to be protected and managed against exploitation.

The officer at the same time asked forest stations across the country to develop an up-to-date participatory forest manual plan and forest
management actions to guide in the process.

The office at the same time stated that the national government was in talks with counties to have issues of trans-boundary forests addressed so that each county play its role effectively in conserving the forest resources.

He cited Bomet which he said has a bigger share of the resource but being managed from Narok hence need to develop a framework so that it can address such issues.

KFS, he said, is currently managing up to 2.5 million hectares of forests across the country.

It is also supporting counties through technical and capacity building to put up another 1.7 hectares.

Present during the event were KFS officers led by Ann Nyaoke among other county officials who represented governor Hillary Barchok.