Aasai

Chief Conservator of Forests Alex Lemarkoko has hit back at the Friends of Karura Forest (FKF), accusing the public trust of misappropriating funds and deceiving Kenyans over alleged forest encroachment. Speaking on Tuesday night on Citizen TV’s The Explainer Show, Lemarkoko said an audit commissioned by the Ministry of Environment had exposed flaws in the management of the Karura FKF’s finances.

 He pointed out that under Article 13 of the joint management agreement, all proceeds from the Karura gate are required to be deposited in a jointly managed bank account approved by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), but he alleged that FKF had violated this article and neglected other compliance obligations. “The audit was conducted by our ministry, and several issues were uncovered. 

You would be surprised at the kind of misappropriation of funds by FKF,” he said, adding that FKF had also failed to submit approved accounts to the KFS Board, calling it a “serious deviation” from the agreement. "They have been submitting their budgets and work plans to the Ministry." Lemarkoko accused FKF of diverting attention from accountability to lack of accountability by creating panic over alleged land grabbing. 

According to the Conservator, the audit further uncovered "financial fraud involving public funds collected by FKF," including fraud of additional revenue, deliberate non-disclosure of financial records, and failure to submit work plans, bank balances and financial statements. "The conclusion is that although we are in agreement as two parties, one party is violating the contract between us. That is why the ministry conducted the audit and discovered these issues," he said. "FKF, however, is not informing Kenyans about these issues.

 Instead, they are just telling us that Karura is being grabbed, or that the road passes through Karura. That is not true. You can grab the forest now." He dismissed the claims of encroachment, citing strong legal protections. "The current Forest Conservation and Management Act is so complex - Section 34 requires multiple processes before a boundary can be changed - that it is impossible to grab a forest in Kenya today. Forest grabbing is a thing of the past," he explained. On the controversial shift of Karuras payments to the governments eCitizen platform, Lemarkoko stressed that the move was aimed at transparency and efficiency, not reform.

 "So the FKF must tell the truth and stop diverting attention from the main agenda. The main agenda is that we must change and move from land revenue collection to eCitizen. This does not change the structure of the FKF. All staff will continue to work, and the KFS will facilitate that through a joint account," he noted.

 The forest chief defended the construction of 3.2km of tarmac roads within Karura, which has been the subject of discussion on social media,and explained that they were intended to connect facilities within the forest headquarters, and not to carve in the forest. “It is not the forest itself, the issue is that we have a headquarters which is located within the forest, the headquarters has a road network that connects to the staff houses, the canteen area, the information center and the houses of senior staff.

 All these roads we were able to get help from one of our stakeholders who decided to make a distance of 3.2 kilometers within the road. in the forest,” he said. The remarks come against the backdrop of a court dispute between FKF and KFS, with the community trust opposing the government’s order to transfer revenue collection to eCitizen, saying it undermines their model of joint management. The case will be mentioned on September 22, 2025.