by Bonface Musyoka and Fridah Munene
For years, Hellen Ng’etich, who lives on the edge of South Nandi Forest, has watched her community cut down indigenous trees to harvest wild honey. Traditional honey harvesting meant finding bee colonies in tree hollows, cutting branches to access hives, and often destroying entire trees. “It’s destructive,” she says. “But we had no other way.”
That reality is about to change. Through a new forest restoration project, Hellen is expecting to receive her first Langstroth beehive. “I don’t want my grandchildren asking why we destroyed what we could have saved,” she says. “If these beehives work, we can earn income without destroying trees.”
Her hopes reflect a quiet awakening in Kenya’s Nandi Hills, where indigenous forests shelter unique biodiversity, including the endangered Turner’s Eremomela, and small streams feed the Nzoia and Yala rivers, major tributaries of Lake Victoria. For decades, this vital ecosystem has faced mounting pressure from agricultural expansion, illegal logging, and climate change.
Watching the Forest Disappear
Johnna Lelei, secretary of Murguiywet Site Support Group, has walked the forest paths his entire life. He remembers when the canopy was so thick that rain took minutes to reach the ground. “Now, in some places, you can see straight through to the sky.” But that visibility has become his motivation. “We will no longer just watch our forest disappear.”
Dominic Tanuai, Chairman of Kobujoi Community Forest Association, states it clearly: “We wanted to protect our forests, but we did not know which areas needed urgent restoration or which species were suitable.” Nature Kenya’s Darwin Initiative-funded Nandi’s Green Lungs project has arrived with both tools and training to close that gap.
A science-led Restoration Opportunities Assessment and Mapping (ROAM) process is under way, giving communities a roadmap for where their efforts will have the greatest impact. Combined with training in tree nursery management, forest monitoring, and alternative livelihoods (beekeeping, poultry farming, and agroforestry) communities are reclaiming stewardship of their forest. “We’re not being told what to do,” Johnna says. “We’re being equipped to make informed decisions ourselves.”
Ready for Change
“This project will help our people see the forest as an asset, rather than a burden,” says Peter Butuk, Chairman of Kimondi Iruru Community Forest Association. At Rising Star Women Group meetings, excitement is palpable – women imagining their own beehives, dreaming of income that does not require cutting down trees. “We’re ready to learn,” Hellen says. “We’re ready to try a different way.”
A Living Promise Begins
The forest’s full recovery will take decades, but in the highlands of Nandi, a shift is already under way. Communities are no longer resigned to watching their forest disappear; they are preparing to grow it back, one hive, one seedling at a time.
Hellen walks the forest paths now with a new vision. “When my children ask where honey comes from,” she says, “I want to point to living trees, not tell stories about ones we cut down.” Those trees once felled for honey? If this project succeeds, they will remain standing – roots holding the soil, filtering the rain that feeds the streams flowing towards Lake Victoria. For the first time in years, communities like Hellen’s believe it can be done.