Abstract:
Public forests all over the world are managed in different ways. Forest concession policy concerns all matters pertaining to the award and management of forest concession and, therefore, influences the achievement of the goal of sustainable forest management. Even though the Forest Conservation Management Act (2017); which is currently used in the management of public forests in Kenya recognizes management of plantations through a license, concession, contract and joint agreement, no efforts have been attempted on any of these management scenarios. The objective of the study is to evaluate and assess the potentiality of adopting forest concession as a management tool in forest plantations using Koibatek and Maji-Mazuri forests as case study. In particular, the research derived the relationship between the various tree attributes for purposes of volume projection. Systematic sampling method using the plot line method was used. This has given the categorization of timber-based industries that the study area can support. Regression analysis was used in deriving the r values. The study determined the long run sustainable yield based on volume projections and industrial capacities that can qualify for concession. Volumes were determined following the method used by the Kenya Forest Service inventory section for comparability. Due to poor management practices, poaching activities led to lower volumes in high rotations. The long run sustained yields show variations in the volume attribute to difference in the stand attributes, based on area and height. The study concludes that the area-based method of categorization of the number of firms to be supported in the study area is quite higher than when volume-based method is used and therefore the volume-based method is more effective and efficient. Finally, the study recommends that there is a need to pilot concession as a forest management tool to rectify the problems encountered in the current scenario to be able to determine the maximum number of timber-based industries that can be supported by a given forest area.
