KAKAMEGA, Kenya — A Monday morning finds 50 members of the Nzoia Community Forest Association trekking through rain-drenched thickets in the 5,300 hectare (13,000 acre ) Nzoia Forest Plantation. They are returning to an area designated as Compartment One, the 42 hectares (103 acres) deep inside the plantation. Two weeks ago, they planted maize here. Today, their aim is to plant the first of 84,000 seedlings of Mexican cypress (Cupressus lusitanica) between the regular lines of their crop, which they will nurture and protect over the next three or four years as carefully as the grain they will grow around the young trees. The farmers are working under a government-sponsored arrangement known as the Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS), explains forester Jackton Hadulo, who is responsible for managing the Nzoia plantation. “We are collaborating with members of the community who live around the forest plantation by allowing them to cultivate the land and plant their food crop in straight lines, after which we also work with them to plant tree seedlings in between the lines.” Under the PELIS scheme, the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) enlists communities living near its tree plantations to grow crops in bare areas — denuded by timber harvesting or wild fire — to support restoration. The farmers – organised in community forest associations (CFA) – plant and take care of growing saplings while they’re at their most vulnerable; in exchange, they gain temporary access to the land to grow crops such as maize and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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