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Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC

Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC

By Fredrick Nzwili*

As part of their work to care for creation, Kenyan church leaders are backing a government effort to restore the Mau Forest, a vital ecosystem in the Rift Valley region.

The forest complex - the largest drainage basin in Kenya – is a source of numerous rivers that serve one of the country’s four main water towers. While supporting lives and wildlife in East Africa, the rivers drain into major lakes - the Victoria, Nakuru and Natron.

But settlements into the complex, which have involved the clearing of vegetation for farming, logging and charcoal burning, are threatening to wipe out the ecosystem, according to the clerics.

“People are there (settled), but their continued stay there is killing the forest,” said Kenyan Anglican Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit. “All the settlers should come out and allow its preservation and protection of the forest. The government needs to be very firm about this.”

The Mara River, which originates from the forest, is the lifeline of the wildebeest migration, considered one of the world’s most spectacular natural events.

Ole Sapit warns that the destruction of the forest will end wildebeest migration, which is a key income earner. Millions of wildebeests move from Serengeti Game Reserve in Tanzania into Maasai Mara in Kenya in summer, which attracts a large number of tourists from Europe and the USA.

For many years, the Ogiek, an indigenous hunting and gathering community has co-existed with forest while caring for it.

But new migrants into the forest have farmed on river banks and their tributaries after clearing the vegetation. A consequence has been flooded areas downstream during the rainy seasons and drying up of rivers in the dry season. The rivers are also becoming heavily silted since there is no ground cover to stop soil erosion.

“We are insisting that the settlers get out of the forest,” said Rev. Tom Opiyo, a senior Pentecostal church leader in Narok town. “If the settlements are allowed to continue, people will keep bringing to the forest their relatives, and in the end, we will have a human settlement, not a forest.”

With experts fearing that the actions will wipe out the forest and the rivers, the government has moved to save the forest by embarking on the eviction of illegal settlers. The action is targeting 40,000 illegal settlers who have occupied an estimated 146,000 hectares. Already, over 7,000 have been ousted from a section of the forest known as Maasai Mau. The government has said it will not offer any compensation for the people it considers illegal settlers.

“From the evidence and the history of the Maasai Mau issue, the people who bought land cannot plead innocence,” said Keriako Tobiko, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Environment.

At the same time, clerics want the government to carry out the evictions in a humane manner.

WCC member churches in Kenya

*Fredrick Nzwili is an independent journalist based in Nairobi.