Nairobi, Kenya (October 6th, 2020) – The Mau Forest Complex in the Rift Valley in Kenya is the largest indigenous montane forest in East Africa. A hunter-gatherer community lives sustainably in the forest. However, encroachment on the forest has left large parts cleared for settlement, agricultural use and logging. This illegal activity has decimated more than a quarter of the forest complex over the last 45 years. It has greatly impacted the Mara River and Mara ecosystem that is home to the spectacular annual Wildebeest migration, an 8th Wonder of the World. In order to solve the issues of encroachment and rehabilitate the Mau ecosystem, Survey of Kenya (SOK) demarcated the Mau Forest Complex boundaries so as to precisely delineate forest cut lines and solve the problem of fuzzy boundaries that have contributed to human encroachment.

To more safely perform the survey in disputed lands and difcult hostile terrain, SOK relied on the Spectra Geospatial SP80 GNSS receiver. The multi-constellation SP80 has the speed, accuracy, low-weight and ease-of-operation that enabled the SOK survey team to work quickly and reduce survey time in disputed areas.

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