Reviving Kenya's forests in the sky

The Taita Hills rise up steeply out of the Kenyan savannah, reaching over 2,000m at their peaks. On a good day you can see Kilimanjaro in the distance, but on others, seeing anything at all can be an issue.  Jake Zarins, Senior Species Recovery Officer for the RSPB has been working in the area for two years and said: “Because of the altitude of the mountains and the weather patterns, a lot of cloud gathers around them and deposit moisture either as rain or mist. That moisture means that they’re a very, very different habitat to the savannah below.  

“When I first visited, we had a few days when the clouds were in and it’s like being on Dartmoor or somewhere closer to home. You couldn’t see things right in front of your face because of the mist.” 

This island of green is home to some of the highest levels of unique species in the world. These include a warty toad which lays its eggs in leaf litter and the Taita Blade-Horned Chameleon. There’s also several unique species of plant and butterfly and an underground eyeless amphibian called the Taita African Caecilian, which looks like a huge earthworm.  

Jake said: “They basically burrow about underneath the leaf litter eating termites and ants.” 

Out of the 28 unique creatures, 13 are globally threatened and three, including the warty toad, are Critically Endangered. The other two are the Taita Thrush and the Taita Apalis.   

The Taita Thrush likes dense forest with mature trees and is seldom seen. There are only around 2,000 of them left, all of them within the remaining forests of the Taita Hills.  

The reason for the decline of the unique wildlife is because the Taita’s original forests have vanished. In the last 200 years 98% of the forest has been destroyed or degraded, much of it replaced with plantations of exotic species like Eucalyptus, Cedar, and Chinese Camphor. Small scale agriculture has also gradually increased along with the local population, with land needed to grow maize and graze livestock.  

What’s left of the forest is in 12 fragments, mostly found on the highest peaks and steepest slopes. These remain a refuge for the thrush, which at least has somewhere to retreat too. But because the apalis nests in scrub in clearings, foraging cattle often destroy nests and those that are left are vulnerable to predation.

For the last three years the area has been ravaged by drought, caused by climate change.  

Jake said: “There’s not as much moisture here as there once was, be that rain or mist. They get to certain times of year, and it gets pretty dry which reduces water availability and increases the risk of forest fire.”

“So, when you combine all these threats what you end up with is populations of these two birds in little pockets. The connectivity between the remnant forest isn’t terribly good so genetic exchange within those populations is going to be a problem and if there is a fire within an old bit of forest, that’s it. They’re gone.” 

The RSPB has been working with BirdLife International partner Nature Kenya and the local Taita community for many years to try and find ways of conserving nature while protecting livelihoods. Most recently, with funding from the Darwin Initiative, the team have set up community nurseries to conserve and expand the remaining forest.

So far, at the end of the second year of the project, 42ha of forest has been planted with native tree seedlings, with 70,000 native seedlings produced from nine nurseries.  

Jake said: “We’re now trying to diversify the number of species grown. It started off with about 12 species but now, certainly in two of the nurseries we’re up to over 40, pushing towards 50 species of endemic plants and trees. These are being planted in areas which have been cleared of the invasive exotic species which had previously been grown.” 

The nurseries are also producing commercially lucrative crop trees such as Macadamia and Avocado that the local community can cultivate on their farms and benefit from.  

Jake said: “The idea is to promote agroforestry within the hills so then hopefully there will be tree cover that the birds and other wildlife can move through. They might not all be native trees but at least it isn’t bare ground which these two bird species won't travel through.  

“These crops are much more reliable than maize which traditionally has been grown here, so will allow people to generate a better income.”

As well as the crops, there has been support in helping to establish bee keeping and poultry farming. And with droughts becoming more common, the team are also helping to increase access to clean water, providing 100,000 litres of water storage and improved pipe systems. 

Jake admits that the battle to save the Taita Apalis in particular is a tough one. But he hopes that the project so far has shown that progress can be made in short periods of time, given the right approach and resource. With one year left of Darwin funding, the team hope to cultivate and plant even more native trees to help restore the forest and further establish agroforestry as a profitable livelihood.  

Jake said: “The awareness is there now, what needs to happen next is the scaling of it. We are developing a vision for what the Taita Hills could be – with greater investment and increased efforts to restore the forest.”