THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

Lastly, the area is also watered by a number of rivers. These are: Nzoia, Sio, Lusumu and
Malaba.
6.4 Biodiversity and resource usage in Kakamega Forest
In Kenya, indigenous forests cover just over one million hectares, while plantation forests
cover over 120,000 hectares. About 3 million people in Kenya live within 5 km of forest
boundaries and benefit from a whole range of goods and services from the forest. 615 This has
resulted in pressure leading to encroachment, excisions, over exploitation and loss of flora and
fauna. Biodiversity or biological resource diversity is a comprehensive concept and includes
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all nature’s possessions and nature’s variety.
Talking about biological resources in Kakamega entails the summation of ecosystem and the
ecosystem functions, species and genes in a given locality that is: Kakamega forest in this
case. Biological resources embrace species richness and genetic diversity. Being a forest that
has people around it, food and cash crop production is the main land use activity. However,
there are individuals who exploit different wild forest roots, fruits and vegetables from the
forest for food. 10.05% of the respondents agreed that they have acquired products for this
very reason.
Further still, there were another 12.79% who answered that they had entered the forest to
collect animal products in form of game meat that is gotten through hunting. Kobs and
impalas are some of the animals that were got for the purposes of hunting to get animal
protein. We have however indicated that animals such as the monkeys, lions and leopards are
demanded for spiritual reasons as well as related cultural rituals. These accounted for 30.59%.
Another 24.66% of respondents also answered that they used forest resources especially the
forest herbs for the medications. The rapidly increasing human population in areas around this
forest has incredibly contributed to the scramble for land for agricultural and related reasons.
Many respondents agreed that even though they are aware of the pressure that such land use
activities presents to the forest, they badly needed land for food and cash crop production.
Others want the land for settlement in order to acquire the accrued benefits from the forest
such as forest firewood, grass and pasture for the animals. This scenario has consequently led
to habitat destruction, all of which have resulted to diminished quality of ecosystems in and
around the forest. This study however didn’t delve in to the intricacies of the impact of the
human population on the Kakamega forest environment. The impact of the human population
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GoK. 2000. Kenya’s Biodiversity at a Glance. A Report by the Technical Committee of the Conference of
Parties. Nairobi:Government Printer.
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Myers, N. 2002. Biodiversity and Biodepletion: The need for a paradigm shift. In Biodiversity, Sustainability
and human communities: protecting beyond the protected, edited by T. O’Riordan and S. Stoll-Kleemann,
46-60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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