Africa Environment Day is celebrated every of 3rd March since the year
2000.The day was set aside to raise awareness of the pressing environmental
challenges facing the continent. During the African Union Summit held in Addis Ababa Ethiopia
in February 2012, the African Union chose to honour the late professor wangari
maathai by renaming Africa Environment Day Wangari Maathai Day, for her
great contribution to environmental awareness in Africa
especially in aforestation and reforestation.Great contribution was made by the
late professor Wangari Maathai. Professor Wangari Mathai fought several battles
with wisdom and diplomacy to save the environment. This made her a winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded
her in Oslo Norway in Dec 2004.She has left a legacy which will outlive her and
the battle continuous.
Agroforestry, farm forestry, community forestry, social forestry and village
forestry are all terms used to describe growing of trees undertaken mainly
outside gazetted forest zones. Agro-forestry has received much attention in the
development efforts of rural Kenya
over the years. Tree planting projects have been supported by government
extension services as well as well as non governmental organizations. Increasing
the tree cover from about 2% to 10% is the government policy in Kenya. However
lack of seeds has often led to poor achievements in tree planting as the supply
from central seeds stores is unreliable. Local seed collection is the answer to ensuring
timely supplies of seeds, furthermore indigenous tree are adapted local area conditions. It is very easy to collect seed for on farm small nurseries.
Simply observe the flowering and fruiting of various tree species to know when
mature seeds are available. This varies from species to species and from one
part of Kenya
to the other.
Collect only mature seeds for good germination percentage
and from trees that resemble what you want i.e. species for timber from
straight trees, species for fodder from trees with high production of leafy
biomass and species for fruit from good tasting and high yielding trees.
Collect seed which has not been attacked by insect or fungi.Extract collected seeds from pods, cones or fruit and allow drying.
Seeds which are oily or soft are recommended to be sown immediately and should
not be stored ,while those with a hard cover may usually be stored. When storing
keep the seed clean, cool, dry and protected from insects and rats. Label
containers with name of the species
and Date of collection. As Professor wangari maathai said “It’s
the little things that citizens do which makes the difference and she quote “My
little thing is planting trees” That one “little” thing led Wangari Maathai,
who
died
September 25th 2011, to found a movement by name the green belt
movement, that not only planted over 47 million trees worldwide, including
re-foresting her native country Kenya, but had improved the lives of over 900,000 women
through economic empowerment by the year 2011.
