Mount Kenya Trust

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 25 2008 | By: mountkenya

I thought I would try to explain the need for the fencing projects around Mount Kenya and therefore the resulting corridor. Unfortunately for most of our protected areas, and Mount Kenya in particular, there is huge pressure on land. Right up to the boundary of Mount Kenya’s forests there is dense population and hundreds of thousands of smallholdings which the majority of the local population are entirely dependent upon for their livelihoods. Coupled with a history of corrupt and badly managed land policy and tenure for many years the pressure on forests are huge. Apart from some of the Eastern side of the mountain where there is the ‘Nyayo Tea Zone’ there are no buffers between people, indigenous forests and wildlife. Human wildlife conflict is therefore common as is blatant encroachment and illegal settlement in the National Reserve. Communities on Mount Kenya approach the Trust and the Kenya Wildlife Service for assistance to build fences along their boundaries with the National Reserve. Elephants are the main problem for these communities. At night they come out of the forests and trample and eat crops. Sometimes they injure people and occasionally even kill them.  We have been erecting small, practical two-strand fences to help the communities. They do not keep people out of the forests, they just keep elephants in.  Eventually however, once the whole of the Mount Kenya forest boundary is fenced in the elephants will be trapped on what will essentially become an island. This will create a number of problems in the future, and mainly for the habitat itself. Elephants need fairly large ranges and migrate both daily and seasonally in search of their needs. Though vegetation is plentiful on Mount Kenya the habitat does not support all of the elephants needs in terms of minerals which are limited in the forest environment. That is why we have embarked on the ambitious elephant corridor project which will serve as a valve to allow the elephants a migration route to other safe habitats.  The picture above is a good example of how close the ’shambas’ or small farms are to the boundaries of Mount Kenya’s forests. Encroachment and the pressure for land for both humans and animals alike mean there are constant human / wildlife issues. Fencing is one solution but it comes with the need to mitigate the problem of isolating elephants or other wildlife in one area. By their nature elephants are destructive. Trapped in a forest habitat with an increasing population and decreasing range areas the elephants could destroy the habitat for other wildlife. Our corridor and fencing projects are therefore vital for the long term survival of the forests, the well being of the elephants and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who live near the forests of Mount Kenya.