Five years ago, the forest known as Mirema Forest was almost completely stripped of trees. The 2 000 acre area had been over-logged for charcoal in the last decades.
Mirema Community Forest Association (CFA) is behind the reforestation, and during the last five years, they have replanted 300 000 trees with a 70 percent success rate. Not only did this help with their flooding problem, but it also intrigued the government and the Kenya Forest Service to give them some help.
This project has been successful because it used two different reforestation methods: natural regeneration and establishment planting. Natural regeneration includes planting seedlings from the forest they try to bring back. This method has been criticized for being too slow to be used in reforestation projects. Establishment planting uses nursery-grown seedlings planted at a certain distance from each other. Using both methods, the community could replant many species that existed in the forest before the logging took place and replicate the forest’s biodiversity.
The Mirema Forest project attracted a lot of help. It intrigued many other groups to support, further improve the project and expand it to other areas needing help.
Linn Winge
