Over 28,000 families to benefit from Kaptagat forest conservation plan

More than 28,000 households will benefit from a  livelihoods improvement project to help in conservation of the Kaptagat forest and water tower in Elgeyo Marakwet.

The five-year project is supported by World Wide Fund for Nature among other partners.

The programme was a few weeks ago launched by President William Ruto who visited the region.

Treasury PS Chris Kiptoo who is patron of the project, said they are working with partners in the environment sector to help farmers around five blocks of forests, to adopt farming of modern crops and dairy farming.

The five blocks to be covered include Kessup, Kaptagat, Sabor, Kipkabus and Penon forests which are all part of the larger Kaptagat water tower.

The empowerment will help eliminate reliance of the farmers on the forest for their livelihoods.

The farmers will improve the breeds of livestock and also adopt use of green energy like biogas.

Under the support from the Worldwide Fund for nature, there will be distribution of high yield dairy animals. This will help farmers to rear animals that are few but produce more yields.

“We are in the process embracing circular economy which is to use waste from the animals to create biogas. This will the reduce the demand for wood and hence help in conservation,” Kiptoo said.

The PS said they were also supporting farmers to adopt farming of modern crops like tea, avocados and coffee among others.

“We are encouraging farmers to adopt cash crop farming so that they take advantage of the many markets available locally and abroad,” Kiptoo said.

So far under the project, he said they had distributed more than 100,000 tea seedlings to farmers in the region, to enable them shift to the farming of high earning cash crops.

“We will help the farmers around the forests and those in the highland areas so that they adopt tea farming among other crops. All these will help in transforming and improving the livelihoods of the people in the region,” he said.

PS Kiptoo has for several years now been leading conservation efforts for the Kaptaget forests where there have been tree planting activities. There has also been sensitisation of residents on conservation.

The conservation efforts spearheaded by the PS have so far helped to recover huge areas of the forests that had been destroyed through human activities.

“We are sensitising our communities on the need to conserve the forests and have our environment intact so that we all benefit as a society,” Kiptoo said.