Meru South and Tharaka/Nithi county residents have vowed to stop the destruction of trees in 35 acres of Kia Muriuki forest that is part of the larger Mt Kenya forest by private loggers. Led by Chuka Igamba/Ng’ombe MP Muthomi Njuki, they accused the Kenya Forest Service officials of colluding with some private loggers to deplete the forest at the expense of farmers who depend on it for water and firewood.

Muthomi alleged that Kenya Forest Service had sold all the trees in the forest at a cost of Sh8 million, making the area which relies on the forest for rains susceptible to drought. Speaking at Kia Muriuki trading centre during a rally, Muthomi said it is the residents who planted trees in the forest back in early 80s to conserve the environment.

"It is residents who planted trees in the forest many years ago, and they should have been involved before any decision to harvest the trees was made," he said. Njuki said the forest has been and will remain the community’s property therefore no one has a right to destroy it, adding that the rights and efforts of the community in such matters as the forest that touches on them directly must be respected.

"We usually experience the rain in these region by mid October and this time the rains have come in November, and we are blaming it solely on the destruction of the forest," he said. The legislator said they would not allow more lorries to get into the forest to ferry logs, noting that they would mobilise the youth and the communities around to resist any further attempts to cut trees.

"We are not going to allow any more ferrying of trees from the forest, those which have already been cut will be given to primary and secondary schools which have poor infrastructure to use for development and construction of classes other than benefitting a few individuals," he said. Njuki said funds collected from such sale of trees should have benefited area residents directly.

He said the body should have at least spared some trees to prevent degradation or even planted some to conserve environment. Mathira MP Peter Weru called on Environment and Natural resources Cabinet Secretary Judy Wakhungu to intervene, saying if not stopped it will spill over to the other parts of the forest, causing even more destruction.

With support from the Kenya Wildlife Service, caucus calling itself Kenya Forest Working Group aerial assessment of the destruction of Mt Kenya forests have been carried since 2000 and has seen the forests improve as revealed by aerial survey done in subsequent years. Deforestation deprived Kenya’s economy of Sh4.5 billion in 2012 and Sh5.8 billion in 2011, far outstripping the roughly Sh1.3 billion injected from forestry and logging each year, according to a joint Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Kenya’s five water towers - Mau Forest Complex, Mount Kenya, the Aberdares, Mount Elgon and Cheranganyi - feed filtered rainwater to rivers and lakes and provide more than 15,800 million cubic metres of water per year, which represents over 75 per cent of the country’s renewable surface water resources. - By TIMOTHY KARIUKI