A story of 90,000 trees: how Kenya’s Kipsigis brought a forest back to life

Indigenous trees were being lost, and a way of life with it. So local villagers decided to replant their historic woodland

Chepalungu forest has been at the heart of Kenya's Kipsigis community for as long as anyone can remember. It is also a source of streams that recharge the Mara River and, owing to its proximity to the Maasai Mara national reserve, a refuge for wildlife.

But during widespread protests following the presidential election results in 2007, much of the forest in Bomet county, south of the Rift Valley, was destroyed and the trees felled. Joseph Towett, an elder from the community and a passionate conservationist, remembers the devastation. Trees were regarded as a home for animals and birds, so cutting them was like destroying them. The destruction was like a curse," he says.