CABI and Partners Celebrate Clearance of Prosopis Inside Lake Bogoria National Reserve
01 October 2024, Kenya: CABI recently joined partners at Lake Bogoria National Reserve in Kenya to celebrate the removal of Prosopis juliflora, popularly known as Mathenge, from the lake’s shoreline – a crucial step in addressing the invasive plant that has contributed to the deaths of Lesser Flamingos in recent years.
This achievement is part of the CABI- led Woody Weeds + Project funded by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The project, is a collaborative effort that includes several partners such as the Centre for Training and integrated Research in ASAL Development (CETRAD), KEFRI, University of Nairobi, Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at University of Bern, Farmbetter, and various community based organisations and natural resource management organisations.
The event was attended by several key leaders from Baringo County, where the National Reserve is located. The leaders included Baringo County Governor Benjamin Cheboi, Area MCA, Deputy Speaker Kipruto Kimosop, Baringo CECM for Water, Irrigation, Environment, Natural Resources, and Mining Richard Naaman Tamar, CECM for Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries Risper Chepkonga, CECM for Industry, Commerce, Tourism, Enterprise, and Cooperative Development Zachary Kipsang Kiprotich-Kobetbet, and CECM Devolution, Public Service and Administration Peninah Bartuin.
Also present were Deputy Director of KEFRI Dr James Ndufa, Baringo County Warden Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) Grace Wendot, Director of CETRAD Dr Boniface Kiteme, and Dr Tutilo Mudumba, Landscape Ecologist at CABI.
Prioritizing the need to eliminate the invasive plant
Baringo County Governor, Benjamin Cheboi, commended CABI and partners including the national government for prioritizing the need to eliminate the invasive plant that has choked the environment especially killing Lesser Flamingos, a worldwide threatened bird species and the main tourist attraction of Lake Bogoria NR, and supressing the growth of other plants and under growth vegetation.
He said, “Today is a very important day for this county and other counties that have suffered the challenges of the invasive Prosopis juliflora. We are very thankful for this project because the government initially introduced this plant with the best intentions, aiming to support the environment and prevent land degradation.
“The negative impact of this plant has far outweighed its benefits, affecting approximately 50,000 acres of land in Baringo. Our goal now is to reclaim this land so that local communities can invest in valuable crops like aloe vera and improve the livestock farming that sustains them. This area is crucial for tourism and wildlife, and we need to remove the tree (mathenge) because it threatens to destroy the pastureland vital for both wildlife and cattle.”
KWS County Warden, Grace Wendot, highlighted the significant contributions of CABI and partners in researching, identifying critical areas, and implementing effective interventions to mitigate the impact of this invasive species.
“Today, we have seen the positive results of these concerted efforts. In protected areas where Prosopis has been removed, the results are very encouraging, showcasing the success of the interventions. At KWS, our mission is to conserve wildlife and their habitats, and we are actively involved in the working group due to our concerns about how Prosopis impacts wildlife, livestock, and our communities. Conservation is costly, and resources are always limited. We encourage our partners to continue supporting our conservation initiatives,” she said.
Lake Bogoria crucial for both tourism and conservation
Lake Bogoria is crucial for both tourism and conservation, said Jackson Komen, Senior Warden at KWS. “At peak season, the lake hosts up to 3 million flamingos. As a UNESCO World Heritage site, its importance stretches far beyond local and national boundaries to a global level.”
The lake attracts around 200,000 visitors each year who come from all over to see the flamingos. “Protecting Lake Bogoria is essential for both saving these birds and supporting the local economy,” Mr Komen emphasizes.
He said recently, however, the lake’s ecosystem has faced a significant threat from the invasive Prosopis juliflora, which has spread along the lake’s shores from the main entrance. This created a hazardous environment for the flamingos, which need clear landing zones when migrating from soda lakes in Tanzania, Ethiopia, or other regions.
Each time the flamingos arrived, they encountered new challenges, often landing on the thorny Prosopis trees. Hundreds and hundreds of flamingos have lost their struggle to disentangle from the sharp thorns, and you may often see their carcasses hanging from the branches.
Mr Komen added, “In the frame of the Woody Weeds+ project, we created a County Implementation Group (CIG), which is chaired by Director KEFRI Baringo Sub-Centre Simon Choge and consists of 25 stakeholders across different sectors and from policymakers to land users. The CIG created a Prosopis management plan for Baringo and shared it with the county government. We also identified priority areas for implementing Prosopis management, and Lake Bogoria NR was one of them.”
“In Lake Bogoria NR, we partnered with local communities to manually uproot or burn the rootstocks of the Prosopis trees along the lake’s shoreline and in all other parts of the protected area. This effort was labour-intensive and needed to be carefully coordinated, but it was vital for saving the lives of the flamingos. Lake Bogoria is one of the few places where flamingos can be found in the Rift Valley’s soda lakes, and if Prosopis overtakes the area, we risk losing a critical feeding ground for this bird.”
First phase and next steps
Deputy Director, KEFRI, Dr James Ndufa, said the first phase of the project carried out has seen a tremendous success.
The Prosopis juliflora tree has continued to devastate landscapes and negatively impact the livelihoods of pastoral communities across the eight arid and semi-arid counties; Turkana, Baringo, Marsabit, Isiolo, Tana River, Garissa, Taita Taveta and Kajiado with livestock, wildlife and farmers bearing the most brunt.
“We have submitted our proposal to the government, seeking support for the establishment of a Prosopis management fund. This fund is intended to be allocated to targeted counties to address the issue effectively.
“Our strategy includes a comprehensive restoration plan for these counties, focusing on the rejuvenation of native vegetation. Additionally, we have developed a detailed management plan to guide these restoration efforts and ensure the successful recovery of affected areas,” he said.
Dr Tutilo Mudumba said the initial ‘Woody Weeds’ project, which finished in 2021, produced a lot of new scientific insight into the impacts of Prosopis on humans and on nature in eastern Africa. The information was shared with the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change & Forestry and fed into the development of a National Prosopis Strategy for Kenya. The strategy aims to safeguard the country’s environment, ecosystem services, and livelihoods from the invasive Prosopis juliflora. Woody Weeds + was launched in 2021 to support Kenyan institutions in implementing the National Prosopis Strategy in three highly invaded counties, i.e., Baringo, Isiolo and Tana River County, and to incorporate the jointly developed Prosopis management plans into the existing budgetary and planning processes at the county level.
While the Woody Weeds project was implemented in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania, the Woody Weeds+ project focused on Kenya. In Tanzania, CABI co-led a project with Tanzanian partners in the Lake Natron Basin in northern Tanzania which supported the implementation of the new Tanzanian National Invasive Species Strategy and Action Plan, focusing on Prosopis juliflora.
Dr Tutilo added sustainable management of invasive alien trees like Prosopis requires an Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) approach that aims to manage the invasive tree not only at the level of individual households but also at the landscape level.
“Throughout the Woody Weeds project, cooperation with stakeholders from local, subnational and national levels was key to understanding the social and ecological effects of the invasive species and how to manage them. We are grateful for the support of the project donors and partners in taking this very significant work to monitor, manage and mitigate Prosopis further,” he said.
CABI is exploring a new global initiative focussed on ILM to manage environmental issues in degraded landscapes that affect stakeholders in diverse ways.
CABI seeks to support member countries by convening and empowering stakeholders to jointly embark on a long-term process that will result in resilient landscapes that conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services to support sustainable livelihoods. Through ILM processes, CABI aims to empower multiple stakeholders to envision how landscapes function and to collaboratively plan and implement landscape level interventions.
“These efforts will result in degraded landscapes being restored and further degradation prevented supporting resilient livelihoods sustainably. Baringo is one of the eight landscapes identified by national stakeholders and partners as a priority landscape for the Initiative,” said Dr Tutilo.
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