NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 4 – The government announced on Thursday that it was embarking on phase III of the Mau Forest reclamation exercise. In a statement, the head of the Interim Coordinating Secretariat Hassan Noor Hassan said the next phase will entail the recovery of titled forestland in Maasai Mau trust land forest. The Maasai Mau is an indigenous trust land forest, covering some 45, 800 hectares, and managed by the Narok County Council. Here is Mr Hassan’s statement: Decades of Destruction Over the last decade, some 43 percent of the Maasai Mau trust land forest was allocated to individuals and companies leading to massive destruction of the forest cover. Forest destruction derived mainly from two illegal/ irregular land allocation processes: a) Western part of Maasai Mau (often referred to as Sierra Leone): In the late 1990s, during the sub-division of five group ranches, title deeds were issued well in excess of the group ranches’ originally adjudicated areas. This “ballooning” of the group ranches led to massive encroachment into the Maasai Mau trust land forest, by at least 17,101 hectares. b) South-eastern part of Maasai Mau (Nkareta area): The re-declaration of the adjacent adjudication sections to conform to the recommendations of the 1986 Presidential Ole Ntutu Commission was not done for one adjudication section, namely Nkareta. This enabled claims on an extensive area (2,752 hectares) in Maasai Mau trust land forest beyond the Presidential Ole Ntutu Commission boundaries. …
Mau evictions to resume
