bushman’s poison
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 26 2009 | By: ngongforest
Acokanthera oppositifolia, is an evergreen shrub that grows to a height of 3-5m high. its known to be highly poisonous.it was used as a form of defence by Africans by smearing it at the base of an arrow hence the name bushman’s poison.
It’s the ripening season in Ngong forest, walking through the forest,you can not fail to notice the attractive purplish red fruits, its rily an ideal ornamental.
Ranger Akach showing the edible ripe fruits
The ripe fruits are edible but poisonous when unripe! i have noticed that the sykes monkeys are fond of this fruits, but when unripe they avoid them.
Am ranger Akach.I joined Ngong forest in 2004.Being in Ngong forest is wonderful,for sure it has build my interest in conservation. i have gained experience in fauna and flora of Ngong forest and now with no doubt,am in a position to guide visitors into the forest.
Have you any interest in flora and fauna of the forest?come, you are the visitor am looking for.
For more information visit our website www.ngongforest.org
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more on the bee project
Category: Ngong Forest | Date: Feb 25 2009 | By: ngongforest
a few minutes ago,we again had a chance to visit the apiary, with hopeful minds at least to get if not more but a few kilos of honey.
a woman dressed in full attire holding a frame which contain honey
I learnt that the honey is held in a frame(above shown), the white patch is a form of seal to hold the honey.
A full packed frame weigh about 1kg,this is what the community women sell to the honey processing firm at a cost of Ksh. 100.(a well buying honey processing farm, this would go to ksh. 150 per 1kg)
During seasons when the bees can find enough nector, the sell is high and on avarage each woman goes home with at least Ksh 2000 per harvest per week.
but this is not always the case, when the bees can hardly find food/nector, there is nothing to harvest! like today we went back empty handed!speaking to one of them “for the last five months, we have had no harvest, the conditions have not been favourable for the bees due to food inadequancy, and the prolonged sunny conditions makes it even worse”.
We are all aware of the climatical changes, its not times when one could easily predict the weather,its not more to relay on traditional methods,and just the same way, these woman groups can nolonger predict the food patterns that is dependent on the prevailing weather conditions which again affect the magnitude of their harvest.
the challange is: how then can they supplement the food/nector inorder to restore their normal harvest?
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Pressure mounts on
Category: Ngong Forest | Date: Feb 20 2009 | By: ngongforest
Pressure mounts on
English Name:Silver Oak
Botanical Name: Brachyleane huillensis
Local Name: Muhugu
In one of our normal patrols, we came across 30 pieces of Silver Oak tree cut in hidden in the forest.
The tree is on demand for carving because of its good quality wood, it carves easily and polishes well with a good finish .
This tree is also used as firewood, poles,posts, carving as well as ornamental
Ngong forest is among one of the very few places in East Africa where this species exists naturally but recently huge volumes have been cleared.
A freshly cut silver oak stump cut.
The mature trees are increasingly becoming scarce. Recently we managed to recover some already carved items from a wood carving yard in the neighbouring Kibera slum.
In a recent Forestry Sector Outlook Study ,The Kenya woodcarving industry uses over 50,000 trees equivalent to almost 8,000 cubic meters of wood annually. This is equivalent to 10 trees being felled per hectares of natural closed-canopy in Kenya every year.
Display of some carvings made from silver Oak
We suspect this illegal activity happens during the night since our rangers are always on ground parol during the day.
we have also erected an electric fence all round the sanctuary to minimize entry.
Do you have other ideas we can implement?
Please share with us
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From our ranger’s desk
Category: Ngong Forest | Date: Feb 16 2009 | By: ngongforest
Meet George Thuo, a forest ranger at Ngong Road Forets Sanctuary . I really like being within the forest atmosphere or other enviromental resources. I used to have a tree nursery in Nyandarua North District where i used to distribute different tree species to individuas and institutions like Kanjuiri secondary School. When i was in National Youth Services college,i gathered more information on conservation from the Enviromental Officer who encouraged me to join an enviromental institution. This is the basis of my interest in conservation.
In 2005, i joined the Sanctuary as a ranger. i was deployed at Bomas camp before being shifted to Hillcrest Camp. with my colleagues, we faced a lot of challanges due to the increased illegal loggers,herbalists and robbers. In Hillcrest camp, i served for 1 year inspite of being alone in the camp because we are very few ranger,currently amounting to 6,it is no doubt that we can not make to cover the whole of the forest, which is 600ha. though we receive support from Forest Guards from Kenya Forest Service,(through an MOU to conserve this forest) we still need addation of the rangers to be able to effectively man the forest.
George showing a felled tree by loggers
My experiences with the tree loggers has not been any interesting, sometimes they are armed and i have to retrieve,they evenat times turn to be hostile! for instance, there is a day i struggled with three robbers, they overpowered me and got into my work station,stole some assets which included 12 solar panels,energizers,batteries,monitors and some other electric fence gadgets.maybe i would have secured this items ,but unfortunately we are not armed!
demonstration on how forest intruders find their way to the forest under the electrified fence
I moved to the main gate camp. forest destruction is still happening. sometimes when am on my normal patrols,mostly i encounter the loggers,i first assess their strength and decide on which action to take, i either arrest them ,scare them or ask for assistance from the other rangers or guards. action is dependent on the nature of the situation.
I congraturate the Trust for their efforts to conserve this adorable forest,and i know they really need your back up! The idea is very positive and effective and i have also decided to join hands to fight for the survival of this forest, for who would not like to see a forest in the city? do u know how it feels to stand in a natural setting in a city and surrounded by slums?the trees can tell this much more better!
In my view, we need more armed guards and reestablishment of the Hillcrest camp.
til next time.
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could bees be any useful?
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 12 2009 | By: ngongforest
A bee keeping project had been implemented in Ngong Forest Sanctuary about three years ago as an incentive for the local community.Women are the most active participants in this project.Yesterday, i joined a group of community women who came to inspect their hives in the forest.
dressed in their full attire,one can just tell from aorest distance that they are set to start the inspection
every bee keeping group has a total of 10 individuals and there are 3 different groups in total .inspection of the hives is done once in every two weeks but this depends on conditions,for example during the flowering seasons, the inspection is done frequently compared to the non flowering seasons.
bees are intresting insects to study, for the women to have effective inspection/harvesting, they need to control the queen, with the help of a smoker, ‘we smoke the queen making it/her to get drunk’ this is because the queen produces pheromone to alert the solder bee of the presence of an enemy’
Women using a smoker
i also learnt that there are different hives, Brude box is the largest ,this is where you find the queen and she lays eggs from here
Super box-mostly you find the worker bees. these is placed on top of the brude box and honey is collected from here. both are separated by a structure called queen excluder.
one of woman showing the brude box
super box
Today we did not get any ready honey, but proberbly signs has it that next visit we could be lucky
is this project worth for the local community?join me next wenesday as i take you through the other steps and as we learn more from these resourceful community women.
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Fermented bananas work best for some butterfly species
Category: research | Date: Feb 11 2009 | By: ngongforest
A scene of plenty of butterflies. in the forest is a show of a healthy ecosystem. Currently a team from ICIPE is carrying out a butterfly inventory project in the forest. The main aim is to identify and come up with a checklist of butterfly species in the forest.Inorder to do this, we have established trap at various location in the forest. Traps are checked every two days. In the traps, pieces of fermented banana mixed with alcohol and dilute sugar are placed to attract butterflies,
Solution placed in the trap
the main species attracted by this is the Charaxes candrope, a species that is abundant in Ngong forest.
Flower loving butterflies especially Papionidae family , we use hand nets to trap them. These exercise is quite challenging, some butterflies fly too high!
The collected butterfly species are preserved and prepared for display in the Education Centre Museum.
Sample preparation
Getting to identify and finding different species , especially the most rare species is our joy.
Slum women start energy project in Ngong Road Forest
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 04 2009 | By: admin
Last week our two women from the local community of Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, started a project that could lead them out of poverty.
Kibera is not the kind of place that most people would choose to live, over 2 million people call this home.
This is Njeri Kamau, she has three young children and has lived in Kibera all her life. To her this is home where she earns an income to support her children.
Live for Kibera residents is very tough. This is Rosemary who like Njeri has 3 children. Both women have carried 70Kg of fuel wood on their heads every day for the last 30 years from Ngong Road Forest to supply Kibera residents.
Last year during the election crisis, both of these ladies lost all their properties to looters who raided their houses. These women, and many others in Kibera, depend entirely on fuel wood collection as a means of living. They began harvesting wood from the Ngong road forest some 30 years ago, it was illegal and they risked being arrested and thrown into jail if caught.
Now that the Ngong Road Forest Sanctuary has been gazetted, these women can collect fuelwood legally. It is a managed community benefit that is offered by the forest sanctuary in order to maintain good relations and to reduce forest destruction. Only dead wood can be collectd. Over 170 women are registered to collect firewood and they do so for a monthly fee of Ksh 100 ($1.50) and one day of service to the sanctuary.
More than 5 tons of fuel wood are collected by these women everyday. It is back breaking work worth about 1,000 dollars. The forest cannot sustain this level of offtake.
As a result of the demand for fuel wood, Kenya’s forests are under immense pressure as forests are being logged to produce fuel wood and charcoal for cooking. Ngong Road forest is losing trees to illegal loggers all the time. Alternatives to fuel wood are needed urgently.
Can fuel wood collection from an indigenous forest be eco-friendly?
Can the people of Kibera switch to burning eco-briqettes if they are cheaper than fuel wood and charcoal? Can the fuel wood collectors switch to producing briquettes if it is easier work more sustainable and marketable?
This is what makes the briquette project so exciting. These women are testing a new idea, to produce eco friendly fuel briquettes using forest wastes like leaves, seeds and twigs as well as waste paper. If it works, this will generate much needed funds for paying rangers to patrol and stop all the illegal logging.
Rosemary and Njeri went on a educational tour to find out about briquette making project to learn all about it. Follow the story with us tomorrow and wish us luck in turning this into a successful project.
Tags: energy, fuel wood, Kibera, Ngong Road Forest, women
Briquette making - learning by doing
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 04 2009 | By: admin
Rosemary and Njeri are two women from the slum of Kibera who are trying out an experiment to make fuel briqettes out of forest wastes from the Ngong Road forest.
To learn all about the briquettes making process, they visited Kitengela Glass - a glass recycling plant just outside of Nairobi and very near the wilderness of Nairobi National Park. A number of alternative energy innovations are being tried at Kitengela including biogas.
Art is made at Kitegela from all maner of recycled materials - this is a beer can bull
Rosemary and Njeri had a first hand lesson on how to make briquettes from the staff there, and were able to experiment with leaves and seeds collected from Ngong Road Forest.
Seeds and leaves usually go to waste, Rosemary and Njeri intend to convert these into eco-energy briquettes. The seeds collected are from the common and otherwise rather useless peppery smelling tree, the croton. These seeds are said to be about 30% oil and are being pressed elsewere to produce biodiesel! Eucalyptus leaves are also everywhere as 20% of the forest is eucalyptus. The leaves burn very easily
Lesson 1. Everything has to be soaked and then mashed.
At Kitengela it is done in a traditional pestle and mortar. Soaked croton seeds did break up quite readily but the eucalyptus leaves are very resistant.
It looks like hard work but is actually quite easy as the materials have all been soaking for a week.
Lesson 2. The mush is pushed into a tube and then pressed to extract as much water as possible.
It takes at least three people at this stage- one to press the lever, one to hold the briquettes, and one to hold the press down!
Lesson 3. The briquettes have to be removed carefully and laid out to dry.
Our briquettes made of forest waste looked very promising. They are now drying and we will try them out in a few days.
Findings
- Croton will work
- Eucalyptus leaves need to be mashed. Soaking and pounding do not work
- To make the mush stick together we needed about 50% paper mixture. Next we’d like to try fresh cowdung
- It’s labour intensive - this outfit took 4 people to operate one briquette press and produced 10 briquettes every 10 minutes
The big question
Everything seems to work but before we produce tons of briquettes we need the answer to one important question. Will the community want to use briquettes instead of charcoal and wood?
To test this Rosemary and Njeri went home with briquettes made before and we are anxiously waiting for thier report - would they be willing to exchange fuel wood for briquettes?
Tags: briquettes, eco energy, Kenya, Nairobi, Ngong Road Forest Sanctuary
The value of fuel wood
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 03 2009 | By: admin
On any day of the week, there are 70 women collecting firewood in the Ngong Road forest. Each woman collects what she can carry - about 50 kg (some claim to carry up to 70 kg).
That’s 4,900 kg of fuel wood collected per day, or 78,400 kg per month!
Women can only take what they can carry on their head in one load and each ‘head’ load can serve a family for 7 days - so the wood collected from the Ngong Road Forest cooks meals for 7,840 families each month - that’s about 50,000 individuals!
It is estimated that 80% of Kenyans use fuel wood for domestic energy, mainly cooking and heating water.
What’s it worth?
Each load is sold for about Ksh 200 ($3) - that is how much a woman collecting firewood in the Ngong Road Forest can earn in a day.
It is backbreaking work, literally, but it is worth it for the income.
Tags: firewood, Ngong Road Forest
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