LEMBUS FOREST

One of the rhapsodized about drives in Baringo County is the 41 km stretch from Tenges to Kabarnet. It takes in beautiful forests, hills, valleys and farmlands. The winding road isn’t a busy road, so motorists can enjoy a peaceful ride through the bucolic scenery. Approaching it either from Eldama Ravine or Emening, or from the Nakuru-Sigor Road, the road, cutting into the steep hillside, up and over valleys with wide outwith views, takes to the eastern side of Lembus Forest.

It is a narrow road, barely enough space for two vehicles, and can be hair-raising as you round some sharp bends. But the drive is well-worth the adventure. If approaching from Eldama Ravine, travellers encounter more of Lembus forest, split into three forest blocks – narasha, chemorgok and chemususu. The former is part of Eldama Ravine. Lembus Forest forms the northern part of the catchment area for the Perkerra River which flows through Baringo County into Lake Baringo.

And while the drive is for the most part scenic and relaxing, it is hard for keen keen motorist not to notice the bald patches in the forest, growing bigger with the time. The problems facing Lembus Forest, and its deforestation, is a complex mix of lapses by subsequent administrations and the failure to repeal the oversights.

Long before the woes entangled the management of this forest, it was under the stewardship of the Lembus people, who are closely related to the Tugen people, although this assertion has been rejected by the Lembus themselves. Over the last century, the Lembus people have faced many challenges in both taking ownership of the forest and its management. No one admits of this wrongdoing.

As recent as 2019, members of the Lembus, under the lead of Lembus Council of Elders, were contesting a governmental forest management which, they argued, focused on exploitation and neglected the conservation of the local forests.

The mess begun way back when! In the 1890s, the Lembus people resisted the British entry into Lembus territories, and especially into Lembus Forest. The resistance by the Lembus also coincided with the Nandi Resistance to the British in the late 1890s to 1906. The British officers in Eldama Ravine also accused the Lembus of collusion with their Nandi brothers and cousins to fight the British.

“Lembus Forest” was put under governmental management and used for commercial timber exploitation from the 1910s, under the colonial office. Lembus Forest was awarded to a commercial company for the development of a timber industry while the British conquest of the region was still incomplete.

The subsequent administration of this concession, and the political battles that ensued for control over the management of Lembus, only made things more complicated. Although local forest dwellers, the Lembus, were recognized rights to live there, after Kenya’s independence, they were relocated in areas freed from the forest land, while the forests remained in governmental hands.