More on the Mau

These are just some after thoughts from myself and others concerning the current wrangling over the Mau forest complex:

The mau forest doesn't have a history of such massive destructive fires. These fires are being set by meddling politicians' henchmen and by disgruntled squatters. They're not naturally occurring. In the US, that would mean serious jail time for the offender.
In such dry time, with all the rivers drying up (also not part of the natural cycle of the area), the fires are doing more destruction than they usually would. Areas where fires were set more than a year ago have show little sign of rejuvenation. The Forest service did little (if anything at all) in the way of rehab after the fires, and that land has been lost to shrubbery that will now never turn into old growth forest, unless trees are planted.
Re-afforestation is something that needs to be urgently considered and acted upon across the country. In the last 20 years, the forest cover of the entire country has dropped at an alarming rate. All this is due to charcoal burning, timber, clearing for farms, etc.
1.7% forest cover is pretty sad.

Unfortunately, the lack of firefighting equipment and expertise is not the root problem. Yes Kenya needs improvement in that area. But the core problem is the wrangling of the politicians for land and power and money.
Sooner or later, the politicians will push their agendas too far and the Kenyan people will reach a breaking point.
Whether that means uniting as one to fight a common enemy or breaking off into tribal factions to create chaos, I do not know.

the squatters have no choice, they are forced off of their land by large farms that use all the fertile soil in kenya for cash crops. yes, those tea/coffee/flower farms employ a lot of people, but the percentage of the profits that trickles down to them is so small that it does not help the economy like it should. Instead, the majority of the profits likely end up in swiss bank accounts. this is why the wanainchi have supposedly become 'the bad guy' because they are forced to encroach on parks, reserves and forests, they have no where else to go. its sad that in a country so diverse and fertile as kenya, such a thing as famine even exists. it is simply because most of the land and resources are owned by so few people and the rest are left out in the cold to starve. i don't care what anyone tries to say, growing food to feed our own people would be much better than growing bloody flowers. anyway, all these huge farms have appalling human rights and labor records.

there was a story in the paper a few years ago where a community near the mau forest was tired of the illegal logging and all the corruption so they stopped all the logging trucks coming out of the forest and burned them to the ground. thats what needs to happen. people need to get pissed and take matters into their own hands.

The squatters may not have a choice in where they go, but their lighting of uncontrolled fires doesn't help the situation for other small time farmers downstream who depend on the rivers from the forest. When all that forest is gone, so too will the rivers.
Obviously I realize the social problems with the large scale farms like tea and flowers. A number of those flower farms are not even legal, as far as land rights/usages are concerned. And the flower farms, especially, are pretty much the biggest cause of Lake Naivasha's shrinking size (more so than the drying rivers from the Mau).
Sustenance farming in a country where wealth does not trickle down from large scale farming is definitely the way to go.
All farmers, large and small, need to be educated on the uses and importance of forest. I realize land must be cleared for farms. But if forest never reclaims land, the level of underground water and precipitation will just continue to drop at an exponential rate.

The mention of that story of community members burning logging trucks reminded me of a film I watched called "Hatchet: The Cascadia Free State Story." It was all about locals in Oregon protecting their local forest from big logging sales after forest fires. They would block the road and set up a permanent encampment to deter the logging trucks. They resisted the government and private companies for more than a year. After fighting legal battles back in town, they finally secured the area and protected it from mass logging, to let the forest rejuvenate naturally after the fire.
That was pretty inspiring stuff. And I had thought about that happening here. The only thing I would be worried about is that the Kenyan government (or just those dirty members involved) would not hesitate to bring out whatever armed forces they wanted to get rid of nuisance community members. If they wanted, they could call up their army general friend to come and forcefully move them or kill them.

Even in that Hatchet Cascadia film, the US government made mass arrests, but they never resorted to all out violence. In Kenya, I wouldn't put it past them.