Ngong Forest

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 28 2009 | By: ngongforest

One of our main duties is forest protection. This is carried out by regular patrolling of the forest in order to keep any intruders away to avoid any incidence of any kind of forest destruction. Some forms of those destructions are debarking , tree root harvesting, and logging. This illegal activities are carried out at any time in the day and to curb them regular patrol are necessary. However the six sanctuary rangers can’t afford to patrol all throughout the day and night of the 600 Ha of the forest given the fact that some has to be left to man the two sanctuary camps,the main gate and bomas camp, and without fire arms or handcuffs we have to use experience and skills gained over the years for our efforts to protect the forest to succeed.

rangers on patrol

On Thursday last week at 7:00 am, we met with the rangers based in Bomas camp at a point in the forest called three ways.This is a junction where three forest access road meets. We examined the paths for footprints in order to establish whether somebody has passed there. We could only observe horse and animal footprints and concluded that nobody has passed through that point. At a different point,we laid out strategies to employ just incase we encounter anything in order to be ready to take action. From a distance, a twig cracked and we stealthily went toward the direction only to find an old man Jactone Jakoyo gathering dry twigs. Our target was to get the loggers who cut down trees so we let him go and went on with our mission. We laid an ambush on a certain strategic point where we suspected they would pass. After about two hours four heavily built men carrying hand saws appeared. They passed near where we were and unaware that they are being watched made some calls from their mobile phones directing where they were headed to. We followed them at a distance up to a place where two Vempris simplifolia tree locally known as Munderendu were cut. We waited until they sliced and gathered one head load each as we listened to their conversation which implied that they had cut the tree the previous day. We watched as they helped each other to put the loads on their heads. This was the right time for us to get hold of them! we pounced on them as soon as they started walking toward Kibera slum ,this is part of their ready market. They abruptly dropped their loads and run very fast ,one of them holding his handsaw ready to attack the one who would catch up with him. We however focused with the man who run in a separate direction and managed to arrest him. We returned to where they had dropped the logs and found three handsaws in the loads. We took him to Jamhuri police station to be taken to court the following day for illegal removal of forest product.With Boas Etemesi behind the jail, we knew that his colleagues would keep off the forest for a while, we also knew that, they would eventually attempt to come back but still we would be waiting for them. Not even any kind of threats will deter us for we know that its our duty to ensure that the sanctuary forest is protected at all cost.

Mr Boas Etemesi before being taken to the police station

Ngong Forest Sanctuary, commonly referred to as Nairobi’s carbon sink is protected through the kind donation from friends and well wishers. Kindly be part of the lNgong Sanctuary community by donating to-wards protection of this unique Forest reserve.

By ranger Joseph Karanja

Email: jranjus@yahoo.com