Drought and conflict are hurting Kenyan forests. Can the army fix things?

James Kagambi, an internationally acclaimed mountaineer who lives in Nyeri, Kenya, participates in a military tree-planting project [Kang-Chun Cheng/Al Jazeera]

Nyeri, Kenya – This March, rains returned to the Horn of Africa after 1,000 days of one of its most punishing droughts in four decades.

In Nyeri, just west of the Mount Kenya region, once expansive forests are drinking up the rains as fog hugs the high-altitude landscape like a familiar blanket. But much of the forests have been stripped of their former glory.