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Mau Forest Complex: Renewed Efforts to Save Kenya’s Water Tower
the main source of livelihoods in the Rift Valley and
provides invaluable goods and services to surrounding
areas (NEMA, 2013).
Key challenges
Despite its status as the most important water tower
of Kenya, the Mau Forest complex has been over-
exploited due to a lack of institutional governance
and a long-term strategic plan.
The removal fromprotection of a large part of the forest
has resulted in continuous widespread encroachment
– the Mau Forest is now a quarter of the size it once
was. This has severely disturbed the forest’s role in
storing and distributing water to outlying areas.
According to investigations by BirdLife International
(2014), the Mau Forest has been affected by
widespread unplanned settlement development,
The Mau Forest complex is the largest closed canopy
forest in Kenya and the largest indigenous montane
forest in East Africa, located in the Eastern Rift
Valley of Kenya (BirdLife International, 2013). The
Mau Forest complex is divided into seven blocks:
South-West Mau (Tinet), East Mau, Ol’donyo Purro,
Transmara, Massai Mau, Western Mau and Southern
Mau (Sang, 2001). The original gazetted forest area
covered 452,007 ha, but a large part of the area was
removed from protection in 2001, reducing the forest
land area to approximately 416,542 ha (NEMA, 2013).
The Mau Forest is recognized as the most important
and critical water catchment in the Rift Valley and
western Kenya, and it is the source of numerous rivers.
Lake Victoria receives 60 per cent of its water from the
Mau forest catchment. The Mau Forest is considered
a water catchment of international importance and
supports a wealth of biodiversity, some of which is of
concern to international conservation bodies. It is also
irregular forest land allocation and illegal extraction
of forest resources. The Mau Forest has served as
home to different groups of indigenous people like
the Massai and the Ogiek (Sang, 2001) who consider
the forest as their ancestral home.
The plan to use tea plantations as a buffer zone
may have been well-intentioned but the conversion
of forest land into large-scale tea plantations has
contributed to the immense loss of forest cover,
partly because the designated size for the tea zone
was not adhered to in all areas, resulting in excessive
deforestation (NEMA, 2013). The establishment
of large exotic tree plantations by major timber
companies has also led to the replacement of
indigenous forest with monoculture species. The
strategy to enhance timber production using fast
growing exotic species has resulted in a significant
loss of biodiversity (NEMA, 2013).
Policy actions
A new understanding of the Mau Forest as a ‘water
tower’ has catalysed resource mobilization and
enabled actions to rehabilitate the Mau forest.
In recognition of the impact of deforestation
on economic activities and livelihoods and on a
range of crucial ecosystem goods and services, the
Government of Kenya convened a forum in 2009
to find ways to address the threats to the Mau
Forest ecosystem, and a plan to rehabilitate the forest
was proposed with a budget of USD 81 million
(UNEP, 2010).
The Government of Kenya developed a new forest
policy with a commitment to manage all indigenous
forests (including the Mau Forest complex) to
conserve water, soil and biodiversity, and enhance the
provision of forest goods and services (GoK, 2015).
Tea harvest in Kericho, Kenya