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Mau Forest Indigenous People Under Pressure
NAIROBI, Kenya, March 8, 2004 (ENS) - A scramble for the resources of the Mau forest in western Kenya is
displacing indigenous people who have a constitutional right to own homes there. Drought conditions together
with logging of the forest is drying up streams that feed into Lake Nakuru.
Late last month two politicians were killed, a woman was wounded and hundreds of people were driven from a
site in the Ogiek ancestral forest in western Kenya along the Uganda border, where 200 of their houses were
burned to the ground.
The Ogiek, an indigenous people living in Kenya’s Mau Forest, are fighting to remain in their ancestral
homeland. The former government of Kenya tried to force them out of the forests, supposedly to protect the
environment, but did set aside some land for them. The Ogiek say they are not an environmental threat, they
have been “the guardians of these forests since time immemorial.”
The attackers, from the Pok ethnic group of the Sabaot tribe, grabbed land at Chepyuk given to the Ogiek by
the previous government under President Daniel Arap Moi, the Ogiek say.
None of the attackers was arrested, but 30 Ogiek jailed. The local Member of Parliament John Bomet
Serut, a Sabaot, refused to permit the government’s General Service Unit to restore order, because he
claimed that this paramilitary unit itself would worsen the situation by torturing people.
Local donations to the displaced Ogiek were frustrated by the administration of the area, the Ogiek say, and
they are appealing for legal aid funding, food, shelter, medical treatment in prison, and a vehicle to
patrol their land, as well as health and education facilities.
The ongoing destruction of the Mau catchment area by logging is the underlying problem. The Indigenous
Peoples Land Commission of Kenya said the fight over the forest is threatening the survival of at least
three million people.
Returning from an extensive tour of the Mau forest last month, commission officials, led by chairman Charles
Sena, told reporters that the livelihood of Ogiek and Maasai indigenous communities is at risk.
Tourism in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem could suffer, the “East
African Standard” newspaper reported February 25.
Forests remain on less than two percent of Kenya’s land, and they are essential for water
conservation in this drought prone country. They are home to indigenous
peoples that live by hunting animals and gathering food plants, herbs, and honey within the forests.
The Ogiek gather wild plants for food and medicine, and collect honey from beehives that they make from hollow
logs and place in the high branches of the forest trees.
On July 6, 2001 the Moi government announced that it had banned logging in the Mau forest, but the logging
is continuing, despite some official attempts to stop it. On February 4, police and Kenya Wildlife Service
personnel confiscated 30 tons of timber and logging equipment in Nakuru.
Environmental groups in Kenya and around the world have been warning for years that logging in the Mau forest
will have a devastating impact on water quality and level in Lake Nakuru, inhabited by the world’s largest
concentration of flamingoes and protected under the Ramsar Convention. The lake is Kenya’s second most
visited tourist site.
Today Lake Nakuru National Park Chief Warden Joseph Warutere told “The Nation” newspaper that some of the
streams running into the lake had lost most of their flow due to the dry conditions and
other factors such as “the destruction of Mau Forest.”
Kenya’s fragmented forests harbor half the country’s plant species, 40 percent of mammal species, 35 percent
of butterfly species and 30 percent of bird species - on two percent of the country’s land mass.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Link: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-08-19.asp#anchor2
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