Kisii County celebrated the World Environment Day at Marani Secondary School in Kitutu Chache North where government officials led teachers, students and the community to plant tree seedlings at the school because it experienced a landslide recently during the heavy rains across the country.
Kisii County Executive Secretary to the Assembly in charge of Environment and Natural Resources Leah Bwari said that her team started planting trees from the third day of this month with a target of planting 200,000 seedlings in this year.
She said that they have been visiting different schools in the county advising them to plant seedlings especially the fruit plants for the purpose of improving food security in the region and fulfillment of the government policies of making Kenya self-sufficient in food production.
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She was accompanied by other government officials who included Kisii County Forest Officer Safari Opiyo, who said that Kisii County planted 700 fruit plants spread in different schools adding that the exercise will be continuous.
Basing his speech on this year’s World Environment Day Celebrations theme: “Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience,” he said that the theme is tied in with bringing back health land, keeping deserts from developing and managing water resources, trees and health soils.
The officer discouraged the community from planting eucalyptus in the wet lands, swamps and along rivers because they pull and syphon a lot of water from the soil and make it too dry and poor to support any meaningful agricultural practices.
“I ask you to declare this tree an enemy of environment but today we have only planted it here because this place is away from the river and we found it being the only one that could be planted here to resist and prevent further landslide to recur,” he said.
He asked the residents to take care of the seedlings until they mature by surrounding them with fences in order to prevent cows from eating or bruising them.
Echoing Bwari, he asked schools to establish their own tree nursery beds to enable them have a sustainable supply of seedlings for planting at any time of need.
By Enock Okong’o
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