Monk preaches conservation on slopes of Mt Kenya

UN Mountain Partnership's ambassador, his Holiness the Drikung Kyabgön Thinle Lhundup. (Photo: Edward Kiplimo/Standard) 

Elders living on the slopes of Mount Kenya on Wednesday witnessed a rare sight - a Tibetan Buddhist monk in their midst.

His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgön Thinle Lhundup is visiting Kenya for the first time. He is the UN Mountain Partnership's ambassador and was visiting the mountain to speak with the elders on challenges facing the mountain community.

One of the elders he spoke to was 77-year-old Ann Wamugo, who speaks of the destruction of Mount Kenya in bitterness.

She has lived on the slopes of the mountain all her life, long enough to see people move from respecting the mountain so much that only old people who had cleansed themselves could enter the forest, to seeing young people enter it in droves and destroy the forest with reckless abandon for quick cash.

"We believed that if you took any animals from the forest, the crops would dry up because God would be angry. If it somehow happened, you had to sacrifice a goat to appease him," she says.

"But young people nowadays do not listen to our counsel. Our hearts are pained because this mountain is our gold. It is because of this mountain that we have never lacked anything to eat."

From avoiding the mountain because people did not want to invite a curse upon them, she has now witnessed illegal logging for charcoal and timber, poaching, cannabis cultivation and unplanned development threaten to put an end to the mountain, which has sustained thousands of generations.

Humphrey Munene, field co-ordinator of the Mount Kenya Trust says the mountain is under serious and sustained threat, yet most Kenyans do not realise it.

Glaciers also store and release water seasonally, replenishing the rivers and ground water. However, 92 per cent of the ice cap on the mountain has melted in the last 100 years and scientists predict that the rest could disappear before 2050. The Trust is working in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Kenya Forest Service and other stakeholders to protect and restore the mountain's forests