Workers at the Jimarka Wood Company Limited plywood factory in Tumaini, Nyandarua County. The company is owned by Chinese nationals.
Traders exporting processed timber to China and India have cut down trees covering an area equivalent to five Karura forests in about six months, putting in jeopardy President William Ruto’s ambitious plan to plant 15 billion trees in 10 years.
A report filed by the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (Kefri) to the National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Environment, Forestry and Mining shows that Kenya lost six million eucalyptus trees from farms across the country between January and June this year.
The trees, which could also cover an area equivalent to half of the Nairobi National Park by expert estimates, were mostly between five and six years old. They were processed and converted into more than 60,000 tonnes of veneers exported to emerging Asian economic giants China and India.
“At an average spacing of three metres by three metres, six million trees would cover 11,720 acres. That’s about half of Nairobi National Park, which is approximately 28,911 acres. It’s about five times the area of Karura Forest, which is 2,570 acres. The trees are managed according to the expected products, but acreage doesn’t change,” said acting Kefri Chief Executive Officer Jane Njuguna in an interview.
Local timber manufacturers and the Kenya Manufacturers Association (KAM) were the first to raise the red flag over the wanton deforestation unfolding across the country, prompting the government, through the Ministry of Environment Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, to stop the harvesting of immature eucalyptus trees by suspending the veneer exports.
Veneer exports
Kefri submitted its findings to Parliament in the wake of the ban, revealing the extent to which the traders had depleted the country’s forest cover.
The Nation has also established that despite Mr Duale’s ban on the veneer exports, operations in at least two of the Chinese-owned firms in Nyandarua and Kericho counties were going on uninterrupted.
We posed as potential sellers of eucalyptus trees from our farms and went to Jimarka Wood Limited in Nyandarua County. When we asked about the prospect of selling our trees to them, the manager responded in the affirmative. The Jimarka workers said they process the veneers into marine boards for export to China.
In Kericho County, suppliers of eucalyptus trees were continuously driving truckloads of wood into the Veneer Processing Plant off the Londiani-Muhoroni road when we visited. Operations had just resumed after a three-week shutdown brought about by Kenya Revenue Authority compliance challenges, one of the workers intimated.
Our efforts to get responses or secure an in-person interview with Mr Duale on the matter proved futile as we had not received a response by the time of going to press.
Workers load eucalyptus logs into a plywood processing machine at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
We also sought audience with Kenya Forest Service (KFS) Chief Conservator of Forests Alex Lemarkoko, but our calls to the communications department went unanswered after we explained the purpose of the interview we were seeking.
President Ruto has been at the forefront of both local and international efforts to increase forest cover as a mitigation to the damaging effects of climate change. His administration has set a target to plant 15 billion trees across the country by 2032.
KAM estimates that the loss occasioned by the extraction of the under-age trees is immense from an environmental and macro-economic point of view.
Electricity poles
“When we were engaging with the government in August, Kenya Power was struggling to get enough electricity poles. I have had meetings with gentlemen from South Africa, who now want to start bringing in electricity poles from South Africa. It really raises the question of what we are doing,” said Kaberia Kamencu, the chairperson of timber, wood and furniture sector at KAM.
The Kefri report also reveals that besides the country losing the tree cover on private land, farmers who sold their young trees for processing into veneers also lost revenue compared with if they sold the trees past the age of 10 years.
Kefri estimates that farmers only made Sh642 million from the veneer exports compared with the projected Sh8.6 billion they would have made had the trees matured to about 10 to 15 years. The value would have risen further to more than Sh11 billion had the trees matured to 20-25 years of age.
“The farmers got easy money, but they could have gotten better value, and also our environment would have benefited should we have kept these trees longer,” said Dr Njuguna.
Plywood drying in the sun at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
The resultant damage to the immediate environment where the waste from the shaved trees is left is also long-term, she said.
“We realise that in the processing of veneer, there was 46 per cent loss of material as waste and it is just being kept in a big field where it forms mountain-like mounds. Eucalyptus produces chemical bi-products. The longer it is left in the open, it has long-term effects on the area where it is kept. In terms of degradation, it takes long to degrade. The chemicals also get into the soils and the water system,” said Dr Njuguna.
Kefri’s analysis shows large-scale clear felling of trees may result in increased wind speeds that cause soil erosion due to exposure of bare land, interfering with the micro-climate across all eucalyptus growing zones in the country. And this is manifested by increases in local temperatures and occurrence of flash floods during heavy rains.
There is also a high likelihood of wood prices increasing in the coming days.
“We have gone back to zero, waiting for the sprouts, and by the time they recover from that level of exploitation in another 10 years, that is enormous. We will have a shortage of wood products and this means prices of wood and wood products are likely to go up,” said Dr Njuguna.
According to the Timber Manufacturers Association of Kenya, the loss of eucalyptus trees spells doom for the local timber industry that relies on farmed forestry.
“It totally confirms our fears that the cutting that was going on was totally unsustainable and was causing more harm than good for the country. Now we need to look and see what is the attendant damage to the rest of the industries that depend on these trees. And the first one would be the construction industries,” it said.
KAM believes that a feasibility study should have been done prior to the harvesting of the immature trees, while Kefri maintains it was only consulted after the damage had been done.
NTV reporter Brygettes Ngana with a manager from China-based Yans Wood Limited between rows of neatly arranged plywood in Gilgil, Nakuru County.
“Kefri should have been asked, what are the long-term implications to the country for this? It’s very unfortunate that proper planning and strategy was overlooked. It makes no sense sending a scarce raw material to China for them to make a product, bring it back, and sell it to us at duty,” said Mr Kamencu.
In the aftermath of the ban, the Ministry of Environment says it is now working on drafting a comprehensive regulation on the exploitation of eucalyptus trees locally to avoid the raw exports.
“You will be seeing a gazettement of an import and export regulation so that it guides how to go about it. We would also want to leave our landscape very stable and balanced and at the same time also to use those same resources to engineer economic transformation, especially at the grassroots where many farmers are growing eucalyptus,” said George Tarus, the acting conservation secretary.
The lack of policy guidelines on the exploitation of young eucalyptus trees could have encouraged the entry of the foreign nationals into the country after neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania banned veneer exports due to over-exploitation and rapid loss of their tree cover.
“The main reason why we introduced eucalyptus was to run our steam engines, and over the years we have expanded the usage of eucalyptus courtesy of the telecommunication space, the electrification space and now we are seeing the value addition options increase,” added Mr Tarus.
The Environmental Institute of Kenya (EIK), however, sees a blanket ban on veneer exports as a short-term solution that leaves out farmers who have grown the trees for commercial purposes.
“We believe the farmer has not been heard in this case because majority of the eucalyptus trees are growing on private land,” said EIK Chairperson Alfred Mugambi.
EIK is calling for collaboration with all stakeholders to get a sustainable solution to the commercial exploitation of the eucalyptus tree.
Logs of Eucalyptus trees are well-arranged awaiting to be processed into plywood at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
“The Environment ministry has been trying to commercialise forestry for a while now. We need an all-inclusive industry sit-down with everyone and then we can have a way forward. We need diversification in the products we are getting out, not just from the trees as wood products but also the value they have in carbon sequestration,” added Mr Mugambi.
Alternative exotic trees
Kefri has also listed alternative exotic trees that could be used to produce veneers like eucalyptus, they include pines, cypresses, bamboo and Meru oak that thrive in the highlands, Terminallia brownii and acacia species that thrive in the drylands, and Milicia excelsa and Tectona grandis that could be grown in the coastal lowlands.
“Out of the six million trees that were felled, two million are still lying somewhere as waste, which could have been growing so that they can produce products of higher value, that is nearly one third loss of the value of the trees harvested,” said Dr Njuguna.
Kefri is now recommending an urgent national audit and census of eucalyptus trees on private farms, as it also projects acute shortages of high-value products like timber, poles, posts, fuel and wood rafters, and reduced bee forage for honey production.
“It is important to recollect the data, also do an analysis of the eucalyptus species that are there; each species has its own strengths and limitations. So the data will tell you we have so much of this species at this age, in this area, and therefore we can make better policies and investments,” Dr Njuguna said.
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Economic Survey 2022 shows that Kenya earned Sh199.8 billion from marketed production in forestry and logging. The bureau’s data for 2024 indicates that sales of timber from government forests increased from 37.8 thousand true cubic metres in 2022 to 159.4 thousand true cubic metres in 2023.
