When I was a young man I read stories about adventure, wild animals, birds, and everything that involves nature. There was something that I discovered that hills and mountains were common in most parts of Kenya. Besides their natural attraction, almost all of them had wild animals, birds, and natural vegetation.
I knew that I admired adventure so much from the time I was born. This motivated me to start watching wild animals documentaries just to get a glimpse of what nature had in store for us. A best friend who I knew was mine and who knew I was her friend too came into my life just at the right time. That was none other than my beautiful wife who happened to be a native of Taita Hills. This was the beginning of the fulfillment of my hope and achievement in life. Nevertheless, it took more than 15 years after marrying the love of my heart to reach the peak of Taita Hills. This was an awesome and wonderful day to me and my family when I finally found myself climbing to the top of the hills as you can see from the picture below.
I thought I wasn’t convinced at first sight that the environment would be friendly to me. It is after this great adventure that I got the story to write about this beautiful place. I hope you will equally enjoy reading.
Preamble
The Taita Hills are found in southeastern African nation – Kenya (3º20’S, 38º20’E) rising suddenly to peaks over 2,000 meters higher than the semi-arid plains of Tsavo. The hills contain a number of the very best levels of autochthony within the world, forming a key a part of the Eastern Afromontane diverseness Hotspot. They conjointly form a structure for the expansive Tsavo system. Taita Hills also form the northernmost extreme of the Eastern Arc, a chain of forested mountains extending from Kenya to southern Tanzania.
Taita Hills forests are vital for Bird and diverseness area (IBA) is part of Birdlife International’s Tanzania-Malawi Endemic Bird area. The hills harbor the natural elevation cloud forest whose vegetation is way influenced by each Eastern Arc and Kenyan highlands.
Biodiversity
Despite losing regarding ninety-eight of forest cowls within the last two hundred years, the remaining Taita Hills forest fragments still support a high variety of endemics and distinctive flora and fauna, together with Kenya’s most endangered birds: the critically endangered Taita Apalis and Taita Thrush. Different endemics include the Taita Hills Purple-glossed Snake, the Sagalla Caecilian, the Taita unsmooth Frog, the Taita Blade-horned Chameleon, and 3 endemic butterflies.
The flora is additionally wealthy and filled with autochthony in these little and intensely fragmented forests with over thirteen plant species. The hills are home to the endangered Taita Falcon and Abbott’s oscine bird, the endangered Taita White-eye and therefore the close to endangered Southern Banded Snake-eagle.
Conservation
Dawida diverseness Conservation cluster (DABICO) is the Taita Hills IBA website support cluster. The cluster has thirteen constituent teams and is concerned in activities like an institution of tree nurseries, beekeeping, handicraft, eco-tourism, and butterfly farming.
DABICO manages the Ngangao Forest community resource center that was designed through collaboration with the Nature African nation, the Taita Taveta life Forum and therefore the Community Development monetary fund. The resource center offers environmental education to high school youngsters and is additionally a camping ground for guests.
Nature African nation in partnership with DOF – the Birdlife Partner in Denmark, through funding from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) through CISU (Civil Society in Development), has been running the “Integrating Livelihoods and Conservation - folks Partner with Nature for property Living” program in Taita.
The future objective of the Program is to: scale back the destruction of wooded IBAs and contribute to the belief of best democratic forest management practices for the advantage of all. To realize the target, the program is supporting the formation of 2 Community Forest Associations (CFAs) that continues to be current. The program is additionally supporting teams engaged in resource activities like cultivation, fish farming, tree nursery, handicraft, and butterfly farming.
