The new law, which contains major revisions to existing 58-year-old legislation, was adopted with no fanfare two weeks ago amid uproar over ongoing government evictions of forest squatters in Kenya's central Rift Valley, he said.

"There is a lot we are now going to do in regard to the conservation of forests," Musyoka told reporters in response to a question at a news conference called to discuss an unrelated environmental issue.

The Forest Bill 2005 seeks to plug enforcement and other loopholes in the now-replaced law adopted during British colonial rule of Kenya in 1947 that critics complained was not strong enough to protect the country's forests.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya's forest cover has shrunk from 10 percent of its 582,650 square-kilometer (224,962-square-mile) territory to a mere 1.7 percent, according to environmentalists who campaigned for the new law.

The loss is due to unbridled deforestation for charcoal production and other industrial uses as well as politically motivated post-independence allocations of forest land to allies of successive governments, they say.

The new bill was originally submitted to parliament in 1996, but several politicians close to then president Daniel arap Moi, who retired in 2002, blocked it allowed for the government to repossess previously allocated forest land.

Passage of the law comes as authorities are evicting tens of thousands of villagers who illegally occupy the Mau forest -- a vast belt of Rift Valley woodland -- which is one of Kenya's largest water catchment areas.

The evictions have sparked a furore in Kenyan political cycles as titles to most of the land in question were allegedly given by Moi's Kenya African National Union (KANU) party as an incentive for support in elections in the 1990s.

Deforestation has long been a concern in Africa, particularly in Kenya where a well-publicized tree planting campaign propelled deputy environment minister Wangari Maathai to international fame last year when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature has warned that Africa is losing two million hectares (five million acres) of forest every five years, making the continent move closer to becoming one huge desert.

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