By PATRICK GITHINJI
Last Friday, Amboseli National Park was put on the recovery path and for two years, no development activity in and around the park’s ecosystem will go on.
Tourism Minister Najib Balala, who effected this in a Kenya Gazette notice, says his ministry will not license any tourism activity in the area.
The Minister is saddened by the current state of the park, which he describes as "the worst" ever.
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"The park is an eyesore. It needs to be rescued and we are doing this to allow it to regenerate its ecosystem," says Balala.
The moratorium is meant to restore the park’s ecosystem, which has been destroyed by community ranching groups.
"These communities have been dividing the land in small acreage portions and selling them to property developers, who have, in turn, closed the key animal migratory and dispersal areas," says the minister.
He also blamed the tourist vans and buses for making the park animal unfriendly.
Balala announced that the park would be temporarily closed and animals relocated to other parks before the end of the year.
Other restoration plans include encompassing the community in an agro-forestation programme.
According to Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Amboseli is a home to over 15,000 elephants in the country and receives the highest number of visitors annually.
KWS Director General Dr Julius Kipng’etich says: "There is an urgent need to restore the park ecosystem. There are several proposals on how to allow the park recover from the severe drought of 2009."
That year’s drought marked the beginning of the park’s deterioration.
"Notably, any industrial development in the area will deny the local community prime grazing areas and displace livestock pressure into Amboseli and Chyulu national parks," KWS said in a statement last week.
Halt tourism activities
Balala has also written to the Lands Minister instructing him to bar all land allocation activity in the Amboseli ecosystem.
The decision to halt all tourism activities in the park was arrived recently during a tourism stakeholders’ meeting to solve a dispute involving the proposed construction of a Sh60 million hotel in Amboseli.
In a letter to Kenya Tourism Federation, Balala said he was interested in finding the quickest solution possible to save the park.
Earlier in the month, the federation protested over the proposed construction of 80 luxurious bed units arguing that it is detrimental to the park’s ecosystem.
"As the private sector in tourism, we encourage investment in the sector as a means of wealth creation and poverty alleviation. However, this should be done responsibly and with long-term sustainability of habitats and ecosystem in mind," the letter read in part.
It further said, "We, therefore, are apprehensive that further development within Amboseli ecosystem in and around the park before the recovery of wildlife populations and habitats through strict enforcement of carrying capacity and addressing the perennial water shortage will be detrimental to the park."
Sieg Kenya Company Limited had proposed to put up a hotel on an 11.736 hectares land in Kimana area, which is adjacent to the park. The firm also intended to construct a school and hospital for the local community.
Oppose the development
However, the letter singles out weakness in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which made the federation oppose the development.
The federation found that, "The EIA does not reference wildlife, wildlife habitat or wildlife movement at all. This is shocking given the proposed development location is adjacent to one of Kenya’s most popular and significant parks."
"The existence of large concentration of wildlife, including rare, threatened and endangered species and their dependence upon community lands adjacent to the park, where the development is proposed, merits significant attention."
According to Kathleen Fitzgerald, director of African Wildlife Foundation, the proposed development bypasses the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan — a guidebook for investors, with intentions to invest in the ecosystem.
Amboseli has in recent years attracted lodges outside Kimana Gate on the east side of the park and it is one of the most visited parks in the country.
Industry figures show that there are more that eleven accommodation facilities in Kimana with more than 750 beds, while in the Amboseli ecosystem there are 32 facilities with over 1,332 beds.
However, Fitzgerald argues that further development in this wildlife dispersal area in a market that is already saturated is not sound planning and does not reflect Kenya’s commitment to sound planning conservation.
The trend is overwhelming in the area and similar projects are complete and others are underway, a trend that has caused a sharp increase in land value in the area due to the demand created for the land in the area by potential investors.
Efforts to reach the developer for comment were futile but the federation’s CEO Agatha Juma said if nothing is done we may lose the Amboseli reserve and ecosystem due to lack of sustainable development and management.
