The Ministry of Environment and Forestry has cancelled the movement of baobab trees in the country.
This follows a directive by President William Ruto instructing the Ministry to probe the alleged uprooting of the trees.
Cabinet Secretary for Environment Soipan Tuya on Monday, November 21, instructed Kenya Forestry Service to stop the movement of trees pending assessment of the case.
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"Administrative action will be taken against government officers within the ministry's agencies that did not follow due process," she told a press conference Monday evening.
According to CS, a private company entered an agreement with communities in Kilifi to uproot 8 baobabs in the county for export to Georgia.
The company applied for an access permit from National Environment Management Authority on October 28.
But before getting the approval, the company is said to have started uprooting the Baobab trees.
The CS said that NEMA went to court to stop the exercise. Soipana adds that in the process, the company went and acquired a licence from the county government of Kilifi and started uprooting the trees.
Ruto on Monday morning ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to scrutinize the ongoing uprooting of Baobab trees in Kilifi county.
The Head of State, through a communiqué on Monday, instructed that the process should be within the dictates of the Nagoya protocol, a multilateral treaty which aims to develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
"I have instructed the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to look into the ongoing uprooting of Baobab trees in Kilifi County to ensure that it sits within the Convention on Biodiversity and the Nagoya Protocol," wrote Ruto on Twitter.
He further added that the exercise should be in tandem with the government's plan of planting 15 billion trees to help combat the effects of climate change.
