KFS steps up effort to restore Mombasa’s mangrove forests

Sadik Hassan-KNA

The Kenya Forest Service (KFS), in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has intensified efforts to restore forests in Mombasa.

The efforts come with a particular focus on the mangrove ecosystem, along the Tudor Creek.

The Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Forests (AIM4Forests), a five-year programme under FAO, cutting-edge leverages monitoring technologies which include remote sensing and space data to improve forest conservation.

A key component of the programme is youth engagement through the Young Forest Champions initiative.

“This initiative was born out of the IMPRESS project and has since evolved. Young people were involved in high-level government discussions, and we successfully mobilized funding to launch AIM4Forests,” Ms. Ivana Tara, the FAO Facilitator for the Young Forest Champions Initiative in Jomvu, Mombasa, said.

The AIM4Forests is being implemented in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Peru, and Zambia. A team of ten young forest champions has been selected to lead a community-based forest monitoring and restoration in Kenya.

The program has engaged 10,550 members of Forest Adjacent Communities and planted over 150,000 trees since January.

The high level of sea rise resulting from climate change has severely affected the mangrove ecosystem with over 40 per cent of Mombasa’s 3,771 hectares of mangrove degraded.

“Today, we want to plant 500 mangrove seedlings with the young forest champions so that they also have a feel of the mangrove ecosystem and appreciate its difference from the terrestrial ecosystem,” Bernard Wahome, KFS County Forest Conservator, said.

A forest champion, Brenda Kajuju, who is a student at Kenyatta University said she was attracted to conservation by the community’s efforts to restore Meru Forest.

She uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing to amplify the conservation efforts through monitoring of forests, green spaces, land quality and land surface air quality.

“This year, I was selected to become a young forest champion under the AIM4Forest. From the last two months I have done courses and participated in field excursions,” she said.

Kajuju aims to educate other youths on the use of technology in forest monitoring to enhance conservation efforts.

Anthony Alovale from Vihiga County focuses on combating the rising threat of wildfire fueled by prolonged dry spells and increasing temperatures.

“The biggest threat that we are facing is the increase in temperatures that lead to the vegetation drying up and causing a rise in wildfire. I am developing a fire detection system to have real time monitoring of the fire when it occurs for quick response to reduce the impact,” he said.

Levis Rikwa, a marine ecologist, called for concerted efforts to conserve the only gazetted forest in Port City of Mombasa.

Mangroves play a pivotal role in carbon sequestration; they capture a substantial amount of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and then trap and store them in their carbon-rich flooded soils. Alarmingly, 40 per cent of the mangrove ecosystem is now degraded.