By Howard Atubwa
The first thing you notice about Kiang’ombe Hill is not what you see, it is what you hear. As dawn breaks over the Embu County horizon, a melody of croaks and chirps rises from the undergrowth. The Savanna ridged frog, that tireless mountaineer, calls from both the base and peak, its voice carrying through the mist like nature’s own clock. Nearby, something even more extraordinary is happening: an endangered Spawls’s pygmy forest gecko clings to a tree trunk, its presence here rewriting scientific understanding of its range. This forest is full of such surprises, if only we can protect it long enough to listen.
But the forest’s chorus is growing quieter each year. Where ancient Podocarpus trees once stood, blackened scars from wildfires now stretch across the landscape. The acrid smell of charcoal kilns hangs heavy in the air, mingling with the earthy scent of freshly turned soil where farms encroach deeper into the woodland. Speke’s hinge-back tortoises, those armoured survivors, find their pathways increasingly blocked by cattle trails and fallen trees. Even the water itself is changing. Streams that once ran clear now choke with silt from eroded slopes, threatening the Marsabit clawed frogs that depend on them.
The tragedy of Kiang’ombe isn’t just what we’re losing, but what we might never discover. That Mt. Kenya dwarf gecko you nearly missed on the tree bark could hold secrets about adaptation and survival. Those variable skinks darting through the leaf litter are invisible engineers of this ecosystem. And the red-headed rock agamas basking on sun-warmed stones aren’t just beautiful, they’re barometers of the forest’s health.
Yet hope persists in unexpected places. Local guides from the Community Forest Association still walk these trails, their knowledge spanning generations. Conservationists are documenting species before they vanish. And the forest itself continues its quiet resistance. Frogs still sing where puddles form, geckos emerge after rains, and seeds take root in the ashes of old fires.
The question hanging over Kiang’ombe is not whether it’s worth saving, but whether we will act in time. This is not just about protecting reptiles and amphibians, it is about safeguarding the water sources communities depend on, preserving a living laboratory of evolution, and honouring a place where wilderness still whispers its secrets. The frogs will keep calling as long as they can. The question is whether anyone will answer.