Author(s)

Alice Jebiwott¹, George Morara Ogendi², Abiodun Akintunde Alo³, Ronald Kibet¹

¹Pan African University Life and Earth Sciences Institute (PAULESI), University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
²Department of Environmental Science, Egerton University, Egerton, Kenya.
³Department of Forest Resource Management, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

The Mau Forest has in the recent past elicited serious political and environmental debates regarding its conservation status, as the forest is fast dwindling and the repercussions felt widely across the country. The forest, regarded as the largest indigenous montane forest in east Africa, has been hard hit by land-use changes mainly extensive and ill-planned human settlements. To save the forest, the government has resorted to forced evictions of the settlers. We sought to understand the drivers and causes for the observed illegal settlements in the Mau Forest. To collect data, we conducted focus group discussions and administered household questionnaires on evictees in the South-West and Eastern Mau. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the binary logistic regression model indicate that Poverty (p = 0.000), Agricultural production (p = 0.000) and Land Given by Government (p = 0.018) contributed significantly to the prediction of people’s motivation of settling in the Mau Forest. In conclusion, population pressure, laxity in forest law enforcement and insecure land tenure and politics were identified as some of the factors that motivated the observed rise in illegal settlements in Mau Forest. Such information on the factors that led to the illegal settlements in Mau Forest would be useful for forest conservation policy makers and managers. It will be a basis upon which interventions can be undertaken to enhance sustainable forest management in Kenya and beyond.

Mau Forest, Logistic Regression, Illegal Settlements, Forest Conservation, Eviction

Jebiwott, A. , Ogendi, G. , Alo, A. and Kibet, R. (2021) An Investigation of the Factors That Motivated Illegal Settlements in the Mau Forest, Kenya. Open Journal of Ecology, 11, 725-740. doi: 10.4236/oje.2021.1111045.