Overview
The School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences (ARES), through NTU’s Eastern Africa Centre is collaborating with the Centre for Ecosystem Restoration – Kenya - (CER-K) and other Eastern African Partners such as Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and Mount Kenya University (MKU), to continue to develop research into ecological restoration.
The partnership was initiated in 2019. Key academics came together to discuss how they might collaborate to understand the value of Brackenhurst’s newly-grown indigenous forest.
Drawing upon their collective expertise a long-term plan of research has been drawn up to underpin the restoration of the site. Looking at all aspects of the forest to measure its success, its impact on the surrounding area, and the learning that can be used to inform future rewilding projects.
The team has set in motion a series of activities and opportunities for staff and students to engage in and to establish a centre of excellence in ecological restoration in the future.
In 2020, the Ecological Restoration Partnership successfully bid for Erasmus+ funding and were awarded a 36-month grant of €136,360 to support mobility between the partners.
Brackenhurst Forest, Kenya
The land surrounding Brackenhurst has over the years become degraded as more and more invasive plant species moved in, seeding the land that was once cleared to make way for a golf course. The rewilding work undertaken by Plants for Life International, was not just to restore the land however, but was to use the site as a means to propagate and conserve native, endangered plant species. The forest that grows there now is made up of entirely African trees and shrubs, many found on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. Invasive plants are routinely removed from the forest, to give the indigenous species the best possible environment in which to thrive.