Kenya Forest Service

Mangrove ecosystems face numerous conservation challenges due to human-induced pressures, climate change, and natural disruptions. This paper discusses the restoration initiatives and obstacles encountered in conserving mangroves in Kilifi County, Kenya. Between 2019 and 2024, significant progress was recorded in various restoration sites across the county, with the planting of over 16 million propagules and seedlings. The main species targeted for restoration included <i>Ceriops</i><i> </i><i>tagal</i>, <i>Rhizophora</i><i> </i><i>mucronata</i>, and <i>Avicennia</i><i> </i><i>marina</i>, with efforts largely centered on mangrove rehabilitation. Restoration activities were carried out in key areas such as Kanagoni, Ngomeni, Kilifi Creek, and Mida Creek. The adoption of innovative techniques, such as enrichment planting, contributed to the overall success of these initiatives. Despite these positive outcomes, several challenges emerged. Environmental pressures, including damage by crabs and grazing animals, negatively affected seedling survival. Limited resources hindered the expansion of restoration efforts, while poor access to remote areas posed difficulties for consistent monitoring. Additionally, the lack of structured collaboration frameworks often delayed stakeholder coordination, and illegal practices such as unregulated logging continued to threaten long-term sustainability. The paper recommends establishing clear and effective collaboration frameworks that outline stakeholder roles and responsibilities. This would improve coordination, and support timely execution of projects. Strengthening partnerships with local communities is also encouraged, as their involvement in sourcing planting materials and participating in restoration activities can foster a sense of ownership and motivate sustained engagement.

Forests are central to rural incomes, energy security, water regulation, and climate goals. Yet the promise of carbon finance remains uneven due to contested land and resource rights, weak community participation, inconsistent monitoring and reporting, market volatility, and opaque benefit-sharing that can erode local trust. To determine how carbon markets can be integrated with rural livelihoods, a rapid evidence synthesis of Kenyan national laws, policies, and program documents was combined with structured case studies of representative forest and rangeland carbon projects. Data were analyzed thematically across five domains: governance and authorizations, measurement/reporting, benefit-sharing, livelihood co-investment, and risk management to identify enabling conditions and failure points. The results show that Kenya’s evolving framework now clarifies roles for authorizing projects, establishes national tracking systems, and requires community benefit-sharing through locally negotiated agreements. Projects demonstrate the capacity to generate verified emission reductions and fund local priorities (e.g., water, education, health, and micro-enterprise). However, results also reveal persistent risks: unclear tenure and inadequate free, prior and informed consent (FPIC); gaps in transparent revenue reporting; variable monitoring quality; and exposure to price and demand swings. Kenya has assembled the core policy and institutional scaffolding to link carbon markets with rural prosperity. Realizing this potential depends on centering community rights, credible monitoring, and transparent, rules-based sharing of benefits. It is recommended that (1) fully operationalizing national carbon registries and clear authorization procedures; (2) standardizing Community Development Agreements (CDA) with public reporting of revenues and disbursements; (3) aligning project monitoring with national forest and restoration systems; (4) ring-fencing carbon revenues for local enterprises—beekeeping, nurseries, efficient cooking, sustainable wood products, and eco-tourism with gender and youth quotas; (5) requiring independent audits and accessible grievance redress mechanisms; and (6) benchmarking projects against internationally recognized integrity standards to stabilize demand and pricing.

Anopheles stephensi (Diptera: Culicidae), a primary malaria vector native to south Asia and the Arabian peninsula, has recently spread to Sri Lanka and the Horn of Africa (HOA). Its arrival poses a serious challenge to malaria control initiatives, particularly in the rapidly urbanized African settings because it can transmit both Plasmodium falciparum (Haemosporida: Plasmodidae) and Plasmodium vivax (Haemosporida: Plasmodidae). This threat is compounded by the vector's growing resistance to insecticides, particularly pyrethroids, the backbone of indoor residual spraying (IRS) and insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). The use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which exhibits a comparable mode of action to pyrethroids, significantly increases the likelihood of cross-resistance development. This review presents the first regionally integrated synthesis of An. stephensi susceptibility to pyrethroids and DDT. The analysis encompasses phenotypic resistance and underlying molecular mechanisms across the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region, the Indian subcontinent and the HOA regions where the species is either native or invasive. Twenty-one studies published over the past two decades were identified through searches in five electronic databases. The findings revealed confirmed resistance to multiple pyrethroid compounds such as permethrin, deltamethrin, lambdacyhalothrin, alpha-cypermethrin, and cyfluthrin, as well as DDT, while susceptibility to etofenprox varied by location. Geographic variability was observed in intensity of resistance and allele distribution across Iranian sites. Mechanistically, resistance was linked to both target-site knockdown resistance (kdr) mutations (L1014F and L1014S) and metabolic detoxification pathways involving cytochrome P450s, glutathione S-transferases (GSTs), and esterases. These findings underscore the escalating menace that insecticide resistance poses to malaria vector control, particularly in newly invaded regions characterized by inadequate surveillance infrastructure and pronounced reliance on pyrethroid-based interventions. This review advocates for the establishment of comprehensive global monitoring frameworks and the formulation of evidence-based resistance management strategies tailored to local vector ecologies and resistance mechanisms.

<b>Nina Linder and colleagues</b> examine how artificial intelligence could be applied to diagnostic methods that rely on highly trained experts, such as cytological screening for cervical cancer, enabling implementation even in resource limited settings

Parenting programs have primarily focused on supporting mothers with knowledge and practice of responsive caregiving. However, the role of non-primary caregivers such as grandparents, aunts, and older siblings has not been adequately addressed in programming. Using ChildFund International's programmatic data from Kenya and Uganda, this cross-sectional study examined the extent to which children aged 0-5 years were left in the care of non-primary caregivers in the household and whether the primary caregivers' absence was associated with engagement by non-primary caregivers. We found that a considerable proportion of children aged 0-5 years in Kenya and Uganda were entrusted in the care of non-primary caregivers for at least 3 days or more during the week. Yet, the primary caregivers' absence was not consistently associated with greater engagement by fathers and other members of the household. Our findings call for parenting programs to consider adopting a holistic and contextualized approach where all involved caregivers are intentionally targeted rather than focusing just on the identified primary caregiver alone.

A bronchopleural fistula (BPF) is defined as an abnormal communication between an airway and the pleural space. This often can arise from complications after thoracic surgical interventions or from severe cavitating lung infections such as tuberculosis (TB). Management of BPF usually involves surgical repair through video-assisted thoracoscopy; however, this can be challenging in high-risk patients who are unsuitable for surgery. Bronchoscopic interventions are effective treatment options in patients who are unsuitable for surgery and involve the placement of valves, glues, coils, or spigots to seal the leaking bronchus. This case describes a successful BPF closure in a high-risk human immunodeficiency virus-positive patient with gastric malignancy who sustained a fistula as a result of cavitatory pulmonary TB. The procedure was done using the endobronchial Watanabe spigot, which is a cost-effective option for low-income countries. This procedure, done for the 1st time in Kenya, underscores advancements in Kenyan interventional pulmonology, offering promising outcomes in the management of BPF, in the developing interventional pulmonology sector in Kenya.

Africa boasts high biodiversity while also being home to some of the largest and fastest-growing human populations. Although the current environmental footprint of Africa is low compared to other continents, the population of Africa is estimated at around 1.5 billion inhabitants, representing nearly 18% of the world's total population. Consequently, Africa's rich biodiversity is under threat, yet only 19% of the landscape and 17% of the seascape are under any form of protection. To effectively address this issue and align with the Convention on Biological Diversity's ambitious '30 by 30' goal, which seeks to protect 30% of the world's land and oceans by 2030, substantial funding and conservation measures are urgently required. In response to this critical challenge, as scientists and conservationists working in Africa, we propose five recommendations for future directions aimed at enhancing biodiversity conservation for the betterment of African society: (i) accelerate data collection, data sharing and analytics for informed policy and decision-making; (ii) innovate education and capacity building for future generations; (iii) enhance and expand protected areas, ecological networks and foundational legal frameworks; (iv) unlock creative funding channels for cutting-edge conservation initiatives; and (v) integrate indigenous and local knowledge into forward-thinking conservation strategies. By implementing these recommendations, we believe Africa can make significant strides towards preserving its unique biodiversity, while fostering a healthier society, and contributing to global conservation efforts.This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future'.

The need for targeted restoration in regions where ecosystem integrity has become compromised is now widely recognised. Local community views, alongside those of other stakeholders, should be incorporated into transparent decision-making to ensure conservation/restoration activities are successful. We used a structured decision-making approach, working with stakeholders and local communities, to pose and answer the following question for Kenya’s Central Highlands: “what future land-use options [2030] are feasible for the study region, which is most preferable, how does this vary between different stakeholder groups, and what values drive these preferences?”. We engaged with 51 individuals from six stakeholder groups (Big Farms, Conservationists, Counties, Forest Users, Pastoralists, Smallholders). As individuals, the stakeholders held significantly different values for provisioning, cultural, regulation and maintenance ecosystem services. However, following consensus-building activities within the six groups, shared values and perspectives emerged. The future land-use option of habitat conservation/restoration was preferred by the majority of stakeholder groups, although one (Big Farms) favoured increased plantation forestry. Water resource management was also prioritised consistently. By using structured decision-making, we demonstrate that ecosystem restoration is compatible with the views and values of smallholders and forest users, as well as those with a direct interest in conservation. Structured decision-making processes can facilitate stakeholders with disparate views to work towards a consensus regarding future land-use options, aiding environmental planning and implementation.

Tropical mountain forests are important biodiversity hotspots, which host disproportionally high number of endemic species. However, the potential impacts of climate change in these areas are uncertain. A key factor contributing to this knowledge gap is that climatic conditions experienced by organisms inside tropical forests (i.e., microclimate) remain largely understudied. Due to the effects of topography and vegetation, the understory microclimate can differ substantially from free-air conditions (i.e., macroclimate). This study aimed at unveiling vegetation structural characteristics and microclimatic patterns along an elevational gradient in a highly diverse tropical mountain ecosystem (Mount Kenya), by combining hundreds of terrestrial laser scanning measurements with a two-year time-series of microclimate observations. Our results showed that macroclimate temperature and elevation contributed >90 % to the microclimate variability in our study area. The influence of vegetation and soil moisture in regulating temperature differed substantially between day and night, as well as in different periods of the year. The contribution of vegetation to microclimate variation during the day was two times higher than that during the night. Soil moisture had a cooling effect on microclimate temperature during daytime, while the opposite pattern was observed at night. These differences affected lapse rates, which showed a clearly seasonal fluctuation during diurnal periods but a relatively stable pattern in night periods. The diurnal temperature range was regulated by combined effects of vegetation structure, elevation, and soil moisture. Finally, we were able to detect subtle changes in forest structure caused by historical selective logging. These changes resulted in a legacy effect on microclimate, thus demonstrating that human-induced disturbances have long-lasting impacts on tropical mountain ecosystems. These results improve our understanding of the climatic conditions experienced by organisms inside highly diverse African mountain forests, as well as how these conditions are regulated by vegetation structure and environmental factors.