Photos for Trees Kenya🌳

"You can't plant with one hand and cut with the other." That was written on a yellow placard outside Kenya's Ministry of Environment today. It is the sharpest summary of the government's two-faced approach to conservation: planting millions of trees while opening protected forests to roads, lodges and logging. We walked to the Ministry with Green Belt Movement, Just Act, Friends of Nairobi National Park and community forest defenders. We carried more than 60,000 signatures from Kenyans who want deforestation stopped. Other signs said: "Hands off our forests!" "Leave the trees and let them be." "Protect forests, protect the climate." Nobody there was against tree planting. Kenyans plant trees every year, and they will turn out again this Saturday for Mazingira Day. But a seedling on a hillside can't hold a water tower together, shelter elephants in Imenti, or feed the rivers that flow out of the Mau and the Aberdares. Every hectare of natural forest cleared is a loss no planting target can offset. And the pattern is hard to ignore. First a road, then a wayleave, then a building, and the forest shrinks. It is playing out in Imenti, Nairobi National Park, Ngong Road, Karura and Suam, and the Mau's logging ban has been lifted. Several of these projects have been challenged in court, some despite conservatory orders. The 2026 amendment to the Forest Conservation and Management Act now allows easements and wayleaves across gazetted forests. So the question is not whether Kenya wants more trees. It is who decides which forests are expendable, and who pays when they go. Our letter to Cabinet Secretary Deborah Mlongo Barasa makes four demands: → Halt destructive projects and respect every court order → Uphold the logging ban, including in the Mau → Publish every excision, easement and licence, with communities at the table → Prosecute illegal logging and land grabbing We also asked for something simpler. On Mazingira Day, present a plan to protect the forests still standing, and report on forest protection outcomes, not just trees planted. A written public response to each demand is due within 30 days. Over 60,000 Kenyans are waiting to see what happens next, and so are we.