Furniture makers elated following lift on logging ban

Nyeri, Wednesday July 12, 2023

KNA by Samuel Maina/Hellen Ndirangu

Greenpeace Africa’s Community Manager Tracy Makhetihas has faulted the government’s directive of lifting the ban on logging.

She said the directive goes against President Dr. William Ruto’s earlier commitment to protecting the dwindling forest cover in the country, especially in the face of the adverse effects of climate change.

Makhetihas argued that the Head of State had committed to increasing the country’s forest cover to 30 percent by 2030.

“Greenpeace Africa is alarmed by these developments. During last year's Mashujaa Day celebrations, President Ruto made a commitment to increase the forest cover to 30 percent by 2032. Greenpeace Africa is perturbed that eight months down the line the president has made a U-turn on his own words,” she stated in a press release.

“There is an evident lack of goodwill in implementing the existing policies on illegal logging. By lifting this ban President Ruto has prioritised profit over people and nature. The ban on logging in public and community forests should not be based on monetary value, but rather on restoring our natural forests with indigenous trees,” she added.

Greenpeace calls on the government to suspend the directive and come up with a policy that will encourage farmers to incorporate tree planting in their pieces of land as one way of increasing tree cover and providing much-needed revenue to private firms and individuals.

The NGO has also called for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to consider planting indigenous trees in the 8,000 hectares of bare buffer zones to help restore biodiversity and increase forest cover. 

“The Ministry of Environment and Forestry should upscale the establishment of mixed forest plantations as it will increase forest cover and at the same time increase revenue while building the economy by providing employment opportunities. The Ministry should also consider planting indigenous trees in the 8,000-hectare bare buffer zones to help restore biodiversity and increase forest cover,” said the official. 

“In a long-term solution, the Ministry should work to foster collaborative relations with communities living near the forests as well as environmental protection agencies and activists instead of resorting to unsustainable solutions. They should prioritize fast-growing species of bamboo to supplement the wood and timber needs of the country,” she stated.

According to the National Forest Resources Assessment Report, the country’s forest cover stands at 8.83 percent.

Nyeri County has three times the nationally recommended 10 percent forest cover and a tree cover of 45.17 percent.

The State imposed a ban on logging on February 24 2018 which effectively restricted the extraction of timber from all public and community forests.

During the last financial year, Nyeri County KFS office collected 24,639,806.50 shillings as revenue against a targeted figure of 40 million shillings owing to restrictions on the sale of forest produce.

The previous moratorium was arrived at following the findings of a task force that had been constituted by the government to inquire into forest resource management and logging activities in the country.

The task force found out that the board and the management of KFS had been unable to “stem and in some instances have directly participated in, abated and systematized rampant corruption and abuse of office” in undertaking harvesting of forest products.

However, several carpenters within Nyeri town supported the lift of the ban on logging as it has opened up business opportunities for them.

They say the move will now open up employment opportunities for licensed saw millers and help bring down the cost of timber whose prices had threatened to drive them out of business.

They now hope the new directive by the government will enable them to access timber at a much cheaper price and in the process bring the cost of production for wood furniture down.

"We are hopeful that the price of blue gum timber which is currently at Sh 35 per foot will go back to Sh 22 as before the ban. The price of mahogany is currently selling at Sh 80 per foot and we also hope this can go down to at least to as low as Sh 60 per foot. This way we shall be in a position to reduce the amount of money we charge our clients on our products,” said Joseph Macharia who runs a furniture yard in the Majengo area.

Anthony Gichuru who also operates a timber yard near Majengo says the lifting of the ban on logging is a big relief to them since they were on the verge of closing shop due to dwindling numbers of clients.

He has therefore lauded the State for reopening the forests to private loggers and said they also hope their suppliers will follow suit and reciprocate the move by lowering the cost of timber to them.

“The lifting of the ban has come at a time the number of our clients was going down by the day. We, therefore, hope to increase the number of our customers who place orders for beds by 20 percent and those who place orders for tables by five percent. This is because the two types of furniture are the most commonly bought by our clients,” he explained.

Joseph Irungu, who operates the Ebenezer Timber yard in the King’ong’o area told KNA early this year the timber industry was facing difficult times owing to a shortage of timber after the State outlawed logging

Irungu said prior to the ban on logging, they were doing well since there was a steady and reliable supply of wood.

The scenario became different after the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) started implementing the directive forcing lumbermen to source timber from private farms and local farmers, a move that pushed them on edge.

“We are doing very badly here after the government made true to their word to outlaw the felling of trees in protected forests. It has now become extremely expensive and difficult to get enough supplies of timber as most of the people we have been buying our timber from have exhausted their trees leaving us with nowhere else to go,” he lamented.

Prior to the ban, the logger said he had by then paid up a total of sh 600,000 to KFS in 2017 to enable him to harvest mature trees from the Mount Kenya forest.

He argued that since like many others, had followed all the legal requirements, the government should have ensured they were given first priority once the embargo is lifted.

“My prayer to the government is to give the first priority to those who had obtained genuine permits for felling trees once the ban on logging is lifted. I personally paid a total of sh.600,000 to KFS to enable me to harvest trees in the forest but this was suspended after the moratorium on logging came into effect,” appeals the logger who claims he has since been forced to scale his workforce from 20 employees to four casuals thanks to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Forest plantations currently cover at least 335,000 acres in all gazetted reserves of Kenya including Mount Kenya, Aberdare, Mau Forest Complex, Cherangani Hills, and Mt Elgon.

In 2019, saw millers across the country had raised concern over the ban on logging, saying trees worth billions of shillings were rotting in the government forests and in the process denying Treasury at least 30 billion shillings annually in lost revenue.

According to the 2020 Economic Survey Report, the total public forest cover rose from 141,600 hectares in 2018 to 147,600 hectares in 2019 as a result of the ban on logging.

Kenya had hoped to attain its target of 10 percent forest cover by this year according to projections by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics released in 2020, a feat that remains elusive.

Courtesy ; K. N. A