Tree nurseries play a crucial role in rehabilitating degraded indigenous forests by providing essential plant stock for reforestation efforts, ensuring that the trees planted are suitable for the local ecosystem. Communities living adjacent to Mt. Kenya Forest, through the local Community Forest Association (CFA), have been allocated space by Kenya Forest Service to establish tree nurseries that would help to raise seedlings to rehabilitate the degraded sites in the forest. There are eight community groups under Chuka Forest Station, with a total membership of 626 members (401 women and 225 men) that are involved in nursery establishment and management.
Adept Conservation Network has been supporting the community groups with training on tree nursery management and purchase of critical requirements like potting bags for the seedlings. Each community group targets to raise 25,000 seedlings annually that will be used to rehabilitate degraded sites in Chuka forest. In the year 2025/2026, Adept Conservation Network supported each of the groups with Ksh. 20,000 (Twenty Thousand) to improve tree seedling management in their respective nurseries in order to meet their annual targets.
The tree nurseries are helping to promote community participation in environmental conservation and also contributing to economic empowerment of local communities through the management and operation of nurseries, from which they sell some seedlings for an income. In the near future, the community groups plan to establish fruit tree seedlings for commercial purposes.
