Government Commercial Forestry
Much of the Government's commercial forestry land within Mau has been lost having
been allocated and titles issued.Hundreds of hectares were felled in the mid 1990s and
have not been replanted.In 2002, the Forestry Department did some replanting to a very
poor standard.There has been no follow up, and unless the few trees that are
there are felled and a fresh start made, the eventual crop will produce little.
There was no good reason to ban the felling of commercial plantations apparently in the
mistaken belief that this would help to save the indigenous forest. If this ban had
not been imposed AND the mature stands had been auctioned then the complaint that there
were insufficient funds to replant would have been invalid, for the timber would have been
sold for much higher prices thus bringing cash to the coffers of the Forestry
Department.The ban resulted in many mills around Mau not getting the timber they needed,
and most of them have closed. The off cuts which were available to the locals as
firewood and building materials do not exist, and much scavenging takes place on river
banks etc which should be protected. Around eighteen thousand jobs have been lost in
the saw mills.The fact is that the land available to the Kenya Forest Service, successor
to the Forestry Department, is much less than it was thirty years ago, and that
coupled with the substantial backlog in replanting means that the Government is
not going to be able to meet the demand for timber. Today forest land in Kenya is just
over 2%. In these circumstances an "aware" Government would ask what else
could be done.Its priorities would be to lease its forestry land to private
investors, and introduce policies which would encourage planting on Private
Farms. It has done neither of these. Much of the timber available in the
market in Nairobi is podo and cedar which has come from within the Indigenous forest
either stolen or from excisions.Inevitably the demand for, and price of this, has
escalated as timber from commercial forestry becomes in ever shorter supply. But this
'supply' of timber from the Indigenous Forests is almost exhausted, and if the Government
is firm in its resolve to protect what remains of the Mau this kind of timber will
not be available in future.Thus commercial plantations will be under greater
pressure. Meanwhile the Government's policies, which could more appropriately be described
as knee jerk decisions without any real thought as to what would be appropriate, act as a
disincentive to the farmer to grow trees for commercial purposes on his land. |
 a. Government Commercial Forestry
b. Government Commercial Forestry
c. FOMAWA Commercial Forestry |
