How Kenya is courting disaster by greedily encroaching on forests

Trees at Karura Forest on April 22, 2023. [File, Standard]

Last week, Kenyans learnt of a government plan to hive off 76 acres of land from the Nairobi National Park to enable relocation of the Nairobi Animal Orphanage and facilitate ongoing expansion of the Bomas of Kenya. In the weeks before this, the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) had cleared around four acres of Karura forest to start a tree seedling nursery and prepare temporary barracks for the National Youth Service. Within the context of the recent floods that wreaked havoc across Nairobi and several parts of the country, these moves can generally be described as shortsighted, for they will come back to haunt us at a later date.