Habitat destruction and deterioration are amongst the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Increasing demand for agricultural products, timber and charcoal has caused the rapid destruction of natural forests, especially in the tropics. The Taita Hills in southern Kenya are part of the Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot and represent a highly diverse cloud forest ecosystem. However, the cloud forest suffers extremely from wood and timber exploitation and transformation into exotic tree plantations and agricultural fields. Existing conservation regulations and moratoriums aim to prevent further forest destruction. In this study, we analyzed land cover change and shifts in landscape configuration for a fraction of the Taita Hills, based on satellite imageries for the years 2003, 2011 and 2018. We found that the coverage of natural cloud forest further decreased between 2003 and 2018, despite the effort to conserve the remaining cloud forest patches and to reforest degraded areas by various conservation and management initiatives. In parallel, the proportion of exotic tree plantations and bushland strongly increased. Moreover, mean natural forest patch size decreased and the degree of interspersion with other land cover types increased notably. Logging bans for indigenous trees seem to have resulted in local opposition to the planting of indigenous trees and thereby hindered the recovering of the cloud forest. We suggest to enhance local awareness on the ecological value of the natural forest by community-based Conservation Forest Associations and to encourage the planting of indigenous tree species in farmer-owned woodlots. Besides, bottom-up management systems that allow for local participation in decision-making and benefit-sharing related to forest resources would be a way forward to achieve the sustainable use and conservation of the last remaining natural forest patches in the Taita Hills.

生境的破坏和恶化是生物多样性丧失的主要驱动力。对农产品，木材和木炭的需求不断增加，导致天然林的迅速破坏，特别是在热带地区。肯尼亚南部的Taita山是Afromontane东部生物多样性热点的一部分，代表着高度多样性的云森林生态系统。然而，云雾森林遭受木材和木材开发以及转化为异国情调的人工林和农田的极大痛苦。现有的保护法规和禁令旨在防止进一步的森林破坏。在这项研究中，我们根据2003年，2011年和2018年的卫星图像分析了塔塔山丘陵部分地区的土地覆盖变化和景观配置变化。我们发现，尽管通过各种保护和管理举措努力保护剩余的云林斑块和对退化地区进行重新造林，但在2003年至2018年之间，天然云林的覆盖率进一步下降。同时，外来树木和灌木丛的比例大大增加。此外，平均天然林地面积减少，与其他土地覆被类型的交错程度显着增加。禁止采伐土著树木似乎导致当地反对种植土著树木，从而阻碍了云雾森林的恢复。我们建议通过社区保护林协会提高当地对天然林生态价值的认识，并鼓励在农民拥有的林地中种植本地树种。除了，