KAPTAGAT FOREST TREE PLANTING DRIVE
The 32,941-hectare Kaptagat landscape is part of the Elgeyo Hills-Cherangany Ecosystem and is an important carbon sink, water tower and livelihood source for local communities. The landscape is home to eight different communities that rely on the region for water, wood-based goods and agriculture, while also supporting the area’s rich biodiversity.
It’s also home to a world-renowned, high-altitude training camp for elite athletes. But this special place is under threat. Unsustainable use of forest products, overgrazing and charcoal production, inadequate regulation and inadequate alternative means of livelihood, mean forest cover and grassland areas are declining at an alarming rate.
The uniqueness of the ecosystem has seen WWF-Kenya through the UK-Pact and Trillion trees and WWF-UK donate over Ksh 8.9 million to the Eliud Kipchoge Foundation to facilitate the fencing of 50.8 hectares of forest as well as restoration of the adopted forest.
The team has been working with Eliud Kipchoge – Olympic marathon champion, world record holder, and one of Kenya’s most celebrated runners who trains in Kaptagat – to raise the profile of the issues facing the region in a bid to restoring a degraded Kenyan landscape for people, nature and elite athletes
RESTORING THE GLORY
“We are working on a formula in which the community can access grass in the area for livestock.
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Communities will also be able to practice beekeeping within the enclosed forest area to generate income,” Jackson Kiplagat, Head of Conservation WWF-Kenya
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