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FoASF Homepage - About the forest
- Visitors Centre - Forest Birds
- The Shrew - Activities -
Community
The Forest and the Community
The FoASF supports any activity which helps local
people and therefore makes them less eager to destroy it or steal from it for
short term gain. The income generating projects in place at present are described
here, and any new ideas on sustainable use of the Forest are welcome. Kipepeo
Project In 1993, Dr Ian Gordon, a lepidopterist teaching at Nairobi University,
with his MSc student, Washington Ayiemba, began a project which would help the
people living on the margins of the Forest. They taught some of them to catch
Forest butterflies and raise their young to pupal stage for sale to the Kipepeo
Project. The Project exports these pupae to live butterfly displays in Europe
and America. Butterfly production has now become part of many local people's routine
farming activities, and new butterfly farmers are still being recruited. It is
hoped that eventually the whole Forest will be surrounded by these people with
a vested interest in its conservation.
Arabuko-Sokoke Forest and Mangrove Honey Local farmers around the Forest have
been helped by the ASF Management to buy locally made Kenya Top Bar bee hives.
These are much more productive than traditional, hollow, tree-trunk hives, and
gradually high quality honey is coming onto the market. Unfortunately, due to
communication difficulties between the producers and buyers it is often difficult
to get hold of the honey. FoASF was marketing the honey until April this year,
when the Kipepeo Project took over the purification, bottling, labelling and marketing
of the honey. It can be bought at the Visitor Centres of the Forest Station and
Kipepeo Project, as well as at Mama Lucy's Mini market in Watamu.
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