KWS STAFF PLANT TREES IN ANTICIPATION OF NATIONAL TREE PLANTING DAY

Date Published:

Friday, April 27, 2018 - 14:30

Kenya Wildlife Service staff held a tree planting drive on the morning of April 27, 2018 at the organization’s headquarters along Lang’ata Road, with a view to making the office complex a greener, healthier and happier place to live and work.

Kenya is endowed with a wide range of forest ecosystems ranging from montane rainforests, savannah woodlands; dry forests and coastal forests and mangroves.  The current forest cover of 7.24% of the land area of the country is still below the constitutional requirement of 10%.

The Forest Conservation Programme in the KWS Ecosystems and Landscape Conservation Department aims to promote the protection and sustainable management of indigenous forests that are considered critical wildlife habitats.

Tree planting within spaces like KWS headquarters is known as ‘Urban forestry,’ which is the care and management of single trees and tree populations in urban settings for the purpose of improving the urban environment.

During the tree planting exercise, about 250 tree seedlings sourced from a KWS nursery were planted along the road boundary and other open spaces within KWS headquarters.  The species planted were Warbugia ugandensis, Juniperus procera, Teclea nobilis and Olea europea spp. Africana.

The trees that currently grace the KWS headquarters compound were planted over 20 years ago. The tree planting exercise is expected be an annual event across all KWS stations, with the end game being making it into a countrywide affair.