Will fifth eviction attempt restore vital water tower?

The Mau forest eviction is back again, this time targeting about 12,000 settlers out of a possible 60,000 in the 922,300 acre Maasai Mau section.

Settlers are decrying what they call selective evictions, which they want shelved until a long term solution is found.

“We are being targeted because we bought land from people who were not influential. The exercise should be stopped until a long lasting solution is found,” says Peter Kibet of Kipchoge area.

Kibet, who left with his family ahead of the eviction, says all settlers should be treated equally.

He accused the Jubilee government of using them as political pawns, staging eveictions soon after last year’s elections.

Joint operation

In an operation involving about 700 security personnel comprising Kenya Forest Service (KFS), Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), Narok County government rangers, regular and administration police, settlers 14 kilometres inside the cutline that demarcates Maasai Mau section and Olpusimoru Forest Reserve are being kicked out.

Already, more than 700 have voluntarily left the place they called home for two and a half decades.

Maasai Mau is under the management of Narok County Government while the 3,400 Olpusimoru Forest Reserve is under KFS.

It is the fourth eviction targeting Kipchoge, Ararwet, Kalyasoi and Kaplelach settlements.

Controversial settlements in the forest sprouted in 1997 when boundaries of five group ranches were extended to accommodate influential and powerful figures in the Kanu government.

The beneficiaries later sold their parcels, leading to mushrooming of the settlements.

The most popular is Sierra Leone where soldiers who were returning from peace keeping mission in the West African country bought about 7,000 acres.

Sierra Leone and Nyamira Ndogo, where more than 20,000 families live have been spared the latest evictions. Other evictions targeting settlers were carried out twice in 2005, in 2007 and in 2016.

Settlers see the latest evictions as political, claiming it is targeting supporters of Deputy President William Ruto as the President Uhuru Kenyatta succession takes centre stage.

But environmentalists say it is the last ditch effort to save the forest that is part of the 480,000-hectare Mau Complex, the biggest water tower in the country.

Members of one prominent family in Narok were allocated more than 8,000 acres. Settlers who bought land from first beneficiaries have title deeds.

In 2005, the government invalidated all title deeds and since then, efforts by Rift Valley politicians led by the DP to lift caveats on the title deeds are yet to bear fruit.

The Ntutu Commission on boundaries that was appointed by former President Moi to identify the forest’s boundaries seems to have had no legal basis.

Drying rivers

In 2005, when retired President Mwai Kibaki allowed settlers back after they were evicted, boundaries were further amended. They were altered to accommodate those who were left out of the Ntutu Commission cutline for political reasons.

Then, the country had been gripped by constitutional referendum politics. Now, the Maasai Mau section of the entire complex, environmentalists say, is on the verge of depletion following years of encroachment.

“The forest is the source of Ewaso Nyiro River which is on the verge of drying up. It is also a source of many other rivers. If no action is taken to save what is left, it will disappear with catastrophic consequences in less than 15 years,” says Christian Lambretchs, a former head of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the CEO of the Rhino Arch Foundation.

The foundation wants to fence South West Mau section, the source of Sondu Miriu River which feeds about 80 kilowatt of electricity to the national grid.

The destruction of the source of Ewaso Nyiro River, Lambretchs says, will affect water flow to Lake Natron in Tanzania.

Peter Kinyua, the KFS chairman, says more than 12,000 hectares have been encroached and wants settlers out for rehabilitation of the damaged areas to begin.

Initial entry of KFS into the controversial forest stirred controversy over its role in a county managed resource.

Kinyua had earlier cast aspersion that the county had no capacity to manage it.

He returned to Narok last week and affirmed that the county would continue managing the forest and lead the eviction process.

He said KFS, which has deployed more than 300 rangers to aid in the eviction and protecting it, is worried about wanton harvesting of  Red Cedar trees for commercial purposes.

He wants the government to ban its logging to aid regeneration.

According to a report by various conservation groups, more than 17,000 hectares of the forest had been encroached by 2008.

Jackson Kamoe, the chairman of Mau Conservation Trust says the government lacks the political will to end the destruction of what was once a close canopy forest.

Several donors including the European Union (EU) had in 2008 set aside billions of shillings to rehabilitate Maasai Mau. The money was never released, thanks to the Kibaki succession politics.

The politics cost NASA leader Raila Odinga, who was spearheading reclamation, the Kalenjin support. EU through the then head of the mission Elizabeth Babier had set aside Sh2 billion for rehabilitation.