Kenya - Forestry



Both hardwoods and softwoods are produced in Kenya. The chief hardwoods are musheragi, muiri, mukeo, camphor, and musaise. The chief softwoods are podo, cedar, and cypress. The supply of softwoods is adequate for local needs, both for building and other purposes. Wattle, grown mainly on small African plantations, provides the base of an important industry. Kenya maintains some 2,320,000 ha (5,733,000 acres) in indigenous forests, mangroves, and forest plantations, about 4% of the total land area. Total forest and woodland coverage is about 30%. The timber cut in 2000 was nearly 21.6 billion cu m (762 billion cu ft) of roundwood, of which 95% went for fuel. Production that year included 185,000 cu m (6.5 million cu ft) of sawn wood and 66,000 cu m (2.3 million cu ft) of wood pulp. In 1975, production of the first Kenya-made paper began at the Pan-African Paper Mills in Webuye.

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User Contributions:

1
dennis omondi
thanks a lot for your well researched and up-to-date material.i would like you to assist me with some information,please could you send me some of the planted forests and their distributions in kenya.i would appreciate if you could also tell me some of their characteristics
Omondi,
thanks for your question although its rather hard to list forests as there are two major classes i.e public and private owned forests.Most of the publicly owned forests include Timboroa forest,Mt.Elgon forest,West pokot (Kabrech forest)Buda forest(Kwale)Kuresoi forest,Aberdare forest,Mt Kenya forest, just to mention but afew these forests are under the jurisdiction of Kenya Forest Service.

Privately owned forest include forests mostly owned by tea industries and other privately owned firms i.e Kakuzi, Sameer Africa and the rest.

Characteristics
Coastal forests are dominated by coastal ecosystem i.e. Mangroves, Palms usually slow growing.

Western Kenya region dominated by fast growing species such as cupressus lusitanica,Eucalyptus sp for pulp.

Mt. Elgon and Mt. Kenya are dominatmostly slow growing tree species predominantly hard wood.


Hope this will assist you.
3
Chris
Great information. I am working on a study on private forest in Kenya . Could you assist in determining the nature of distribution on the private forests in Kenya .Are trees grown in pure stand on roughly one acre of land considered as forests ? Does Kenya export timber ?
4
John
what category is Jacaranda and Muringa respectively?

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