Illegal loggers have also clear-cut vast chunks of forest.
For centuries, the chunks of forest owned by the timber companies have been open to a wide variety of recreational uses, from hunting to snowmobiles.
But in the past 15 years, because of ill-planned settlement schemes (the government essentially handed out chunks of forest to cronies), 25percentt of the trees have been wiped out.
Every time a poll is near, members of President Daniel arap Moi's group, the Kalenjin, are allowed to grab chunks of forest inhabited by Mr Sigilai's tribe, the Ogiek.
More than a year after it appeared, the Bayou Corne sinkhole is about 25 acres and still growing, almost as big as 20 football fields, lazily biting off chunks of forest and creeping hungrily toward an earthen berm built to contain its oily waters.
It's oppressive, it's exhausting, it forces us to spend tons of money on air conditioning, it makes some people ill and kills others, it makes huge chunks of forest burst into flames, and it's contributing to the refugee crisis.
A grass bank is a large chunk of national forest that serves as a kind of summer camp for cows that usually graze on other federal land.
La Cusinga Lodge, sandwiched between the vaulting canopy trees of the Marino Ballena national park and the vast, coral-rich Pacific coastline, is carved out of a beautiful, unspoilt chunk of tropical forest.
Heather Provencio, the new supervisor of a nearby chunk of national forest who needs to approve better road access across the federal land for the private development to go ahead, announced the plan was not in the public interest.
