Kakamega Forest

IUCN Category II - National Park

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The Kakamega Forest (English: Kakamega Forest National Reserve ) is a rainforest in western Kenya, the place Kakamega. He is the easternmost tip of the equatorial rain forest and the only tropical ( lowland ) rainforest in Kenya.

By 1900, the forest was still 240,000 hectares, of which today only 23,000 ha, less than one-tenth, left. Causes are human activities such as extraction of firewood and grazing, cultivation of the soil, radical deforestation or excessive collection of medicinal plants. 1985 were reported in the northern part of the forest as a nature reserve about 4400 ha.

The rainforest is home to a unique variety of rare plants, mammals, birds, insects, reptiles and amphibians. Normally, the forest has a closed canopy to 90%, but this sunshield has disappeared in half, so that the natural habitat of many species are threatened and some have already disappeared.

Protection measures

In Kakamega rainforest today through various activities to save the forest, such as the KEEP ( Kakamega Environmental Education Program ), which promoted sustainable tourism or informed school children, or the gentle use of medicinal plants by instructions of the population by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology ( ICIPE ) in Nairobi.