Rupi Mangat
26 May 2008
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Nairobi — I FIRST VISITED THE TAITA Hills a decade ago with James Mwang'ombe, the programme co-ordinator of the Taita Hills Forests Programme.
Mwang'ombe was probably the best guide to have on the trip. He grew up around the hills and his late father worked in the Tsavo.
As a toddler, Mwang'ombe even walked up to an elephant and touched it and has lived to tell the tale.
I was mesmerised because l had not imagined such stunning, vivid landscapes. These were hills that we had whizzed by since childhood, as we drove past Voi to Mombasa, just standing there like most hills do, still and silent, carpeted in green.
But in the company of Mwang'ombe, driving up and down the hills, all that changed - the hills came alive, the forests were full of creatures you won't see anywhere else on earth, and as the evening drew on, we were enveloped in a fine mist of white - and my love affair with the mist mountains began.
A decade later, I returned to the hills. Standing by a church built a century ago on the steep slope of the Bura Hill, I heard the dreaded sound of a power saw and turned to see a group of local men standing around a gigantic fig tree not less than five metres away.
By the time I got there, the ancient tree had come crashing to the ground. I was stunned. I asked them why they had to cut the tree. "Because it was interfering with the powerline," said one of them.
They could have easily trimmed the branches, I thought, but when l asked what they would do with the huge old tree now lying on the ground, the answer came in a chorus: "Charcoal!"
In my naivety, I had thought that nobody was cutting indigenous trees on the Taitas any more. After all, the Taita Hills are biological hotspots and the forests hold the treasures of the Taita community.
It was time to make contact with Mwang'ombe again to find out what the status of the Taitas was.
"It has been estimated that up to 98 per cent of the forest has been lost in the past 200 years," Mwang'ombe explained. "However, the estimates between Independence in 1963 and now vary from 20-50 per cent depending on the forest area."
He continued: "For example, estimates put loss of indigenous forest cover of Chawia at about 50 per cent, and that of Mbololo forest at 20 per cent. In the past decade, forest cover loss has been quite minimal.
"However, there has been some destruction, especially through forest fires like the ones that devastated Mwambirwa forest destroying about 300 hectares in 1997 and 2002."
The ban on timber harvesting from government forests - imposed in the 1980s - also shifted the logging from protected to non-protected areas.
"The pressure for timber shifted from the government forest to the farms," said Mwang'ombe. There is now rapid harvesting of trees on private farms. Middlemen exploit the poor farmers who sell a tree for as little as Ksh300 ($4.76) and the middleman then sells it at Ksh10,000 ($159).
"If this trade goes on unchecked, the farms will soon be left bare," says Mwang'ombe.
I can't imagine the mist mountains devoid of their forests. These are the famed hills of the African Violet, which is found nowhere else on earth. The mist mountains are so called because they are covered in a fine film of white mist for the best part of the year, especially during the rainy seasons.
HOWEVER, FEW OF THE indigenous forests are gazetted while others are still in the process of gazettement. The gazetted ones are Ngangao, Kasigau and Kinyeshamvua.
The Taita Hills - covering an area of 1,000 square kilometres - form the northernmost range of the Eastern Arc Mountains that stretch from central Tanzania to Kenya - consisting of the North and South Pare mountains, West and East Usambara mountains, the Nguu, Nguru, Ukaguru, Rubeho, Uluguru, Malundwe, Udzungwa and Mahenge mountains.
Forming the first barrier to moisture-laden winds blowing inland from the Indian Ocean, the hills catch the high winds, which mix with the cold temperatures, to form mist.
It is also for this reason that the Taita Hills receive far more rainfall - over 1200mm in some places - than the surrounding lowlands, which receive 700mm or less.
"The highest point on the Taita Hills is Vuria, at 2,208 metres above sea level. Most of the settled area, which is also the most productive is within 1,300 -1,800 metres above sea level," says Mwang'ombe.
"The Taita Hills have always fascinated the scientific community because of their rich biodiversity and ecosystem," he says. "Even though no large mammals are found on the hills, there is an abundance of other wildlife such as butterflies, birds and snakes, among other species."
The most recent discoveries are the Boulengerula nedeni (Taita Caecelian), an endemic spider and a host of other invertebrates that are still to be sorted out by experts.
According to Conservation International, the Taita Hills are part of the Eastern Afromontane Hotspot, which encompasses several widely scattered but bio-geographically similar mountain ranges off eastern seaboard of Africa - stretching from Saudi Arabia and Yemen in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.
The main part of the hotspots, covering more than one million square kilometres, is made up of three ancient massifs - the Eastern Arc Mountains and the Southern Rift, stretching from southeastern Kenya to southern Tanzania and Malawi, with small outliers in eastern Zimbabwe and western Mozambique; the Albertine Rift, which includes portions of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo; and the Ethiopian Highlands, which cover much of Ethiopia as well as small parts of Eritrea and Sudan, and is bisected by the Great Rift Valley.
The hotspot holds nearly 7,600 species of plants, of which more than 2,350 are endemic.
The Eastern Arc Mountains have over 1,100 species of endemic plants, as well as 40 endemic plant genera, according to Conservation International.
Today, there are 34 biological hotspots on earth, an increase from the 25 hotspots earlier recognised.
The Taita Hills are rated as a biological hotspot because they are home to over 14 plant and 10 animal taxa that are endemic to the Taitas, meaning that they are not found anywhere else on earth.
According to Mwang'ombe, the number of endemic and rare species is bound to rise as research continues.
But however rare and endemic the species, they are threatened by human activities.
Chief among them species under threat is the Saintpaulia teitensis (Taita African Violet), the butterfly Cymothoe teita and the bird known as Turdus helleri, or Taita Thrush.
The African Violet, listed as critically endangered by the World Concervation Union, occurs within a small area of Mbololo forest surrounded by an agrarian population.
This is where I first saw the African Violet in its natural surroundings - growing at the base of a towering African prunus in Mbololo forest - one tiny little purple flower.
Surveys on the threat to the African Violet show that fire ranks high among them, such as the fires that razed Mwambirwa forest in 1997 and 2002, destroying 300 hectares of vegetation.
Besides the gamut of natural flora and fauna, the hills are also important water catchment areas for the many rivers and streams that arise from the forests in the Taita Hills.
"Voi river, for example, flows from the hills through Tsavo East National Park into Aruba dam and finally drains into the Indian Ocean in Kilifi district," says Mwang'ombe.
OTHERS ARE THE MWATATE and Bura rivers, which meet to form one river at Mwananchi settlement. The rivers are also important as water recharging systems for springs and boreholes in areas as far away as Kwale at the Coast.
The many ranches in the area also benefit from the water catchment as wildlife moves to and from Tsavo East National Park, Tsavo West National Park and Mkomazi National Reserve in Tanzania.
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