KFS trains guards, community forest units to boost surveillance

The Kenya Forest Service has embarked on training its officers in a bid to  beef up security across all forests countrywide.

The training aims at boosting their knowledge and that of community forest associations (CFAs) as they look at achieving government's directive of planting 15 billion trees by 2032.

Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) Alex Lemarkoko said KFS is moving fast to utilise the officers now that President William Ruto’s government has addressed the challenges KFS faced before.

The challenges, Lemarkoko noted, included lack of enough personnel, lack of financial support and training.

The CCF also noted that since the government has supported KFS by adding more foresters and guards, they will continue training them so as to improve their service delivery.

“We have seen the government adding us personnel and other support, we are no yet there. We still need more support. We need more partners to support us,” he said.

KFS said that more than 70 officers are also attending a Forest Alert System Training in Kakamega.

They include county forest officers, regional officers, forests station officers and the CFA scouts.

“This will achieve a remarkable milestone in advancing forest protection, security, conservation and management through the implementation of the Forest Alerts System,” Benjamin Kinyili, facilitator of the training and senior KFS forester said.

“This is a low-cost monitoring, surveillance and reporting to enhance forest protection and security hence contributing to decision-making processes to deploy the scarce resources,” he added.

The KFS is conducting the training in collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) under East and Southern Africa Forestry Observatory (OFESA).

John Mwathi, a CFA member,  said the KFS has put its foot forward to ensure that even as the country embarks on ensuring 30 per cent of trees are planted by 2032, its officers and CFA members are adequately enlightened about forestry.

"Knowledge is very important. People need to be trained, we started learning about trees when the forest cover was about six per cent, that is about five years ago. As on now, the percentage is growing at a very high rate,” Mwathi said.