The government has announced plans to fence all gazetted forests in the country to safeguard them from encroachment and other destructive human activities.

Speaking in Marsabit on Wednesday, Environment, Climate Change and Forestry Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya said the fencing will help sustain gains through ecosystem restoration efforts such as the 15 billion national tree growing programme.

“The first thing we’ve done as a Ministry is to map all forests across Kenya. We’re looking for partners to back up Government funding for fencing of all forests across the country,” she revealed.

 Tuya called upon to forest-adjacent communities to participate more actively in conservation activities saying the Government won’t succeed in its ecosystem restoration efforts without their support.

“I know we won’t succeed without collaboration and good relations with communities. We must collaborate. You are our eyes. You’re the owners of the environment,” CS Tuya said.

Further, the CS noted that the government had mounted a s crackdown on logging and all forms of illegal forest activities, starting in the Mau forest complex before moving on to other forest ecosystems across the country.

“People who imagine that our forests are available for encroachment should forget it. We have started an operation, starting in Mau, a place called Sururu and we will go to all forests.”

However, she challenged KFS to enhance surveillance against illegal forest activities.

“We can’t employ more rangers and then have more illegalities. The reason we are employing more rangers is to enhance enforcement. We have to phase out all illegal forest activities.We can’t be pushing for the growth of 15 billion trees while at the same time losing more trees to illegal activities. We can’t be engaged in a zero-sum game,” the CS cautioned.

She spoke in a meeting with the community forest association on the first day of her two-day working visit to the County at the Marsabit Kenya Forest Service (KFS) office.