The Chyulu Hills, close to Kenya’s southern border with Tanzania in front of Mount Kilimanjaro, is home to Kenya’s largest surviving population of elephants and one of its foremost large-scale wildlife and wilderness areas.
The Chyulu Hills REDD+ project aims to protect the Chyulu Hills landscape, its forests, woodlands, savannahs, wetlands and springs, and its wild populations of Africa’s best-known animals – lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, rhinos, elephants, and various antelopes. This is being achieved largely by enhancing and strengthening landscape protection, improving livestock management practices, employing forest rangers, bolstering employee motivation, creating alternative income, jobs, and employment opportunities, and supporting stricter environmental law enforcement.
VCS is a voluntary program where projects are issued credits known as Verified Carbon Units or VCU's, each equivalent to 1 tonne of CO2e.
The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards evaluate land management projects.
This project is exceptional as it is 100% owned and managed by local institutions that either own the land or manage conservation and community programs on behalf of the land-owners. The nine owners include 4 indigenous Maasai community groups, Kenya’s national parks authority (Kenya Wildlife Service), its national forest service (Kenya Forest Service), and three leading Kenyan conservation NGOs, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, Big Life Foundation, and David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
Moreover, a share of project proceeds goes to bursaries for school children, provision of water tanks, training of women’s groups in bee-keeping, and provision of hives and equipment.