Ngong Forest

It’s a shame to have to start off this blog with such an urgent and potentially discouraging message, but we have come on line at just the right time to add our voice to the outcry to try and stop what would be probably The most tragic of environmental disasters Kenya will have experienced in recent times… read on.

A Rocha Kenya is based in Watamu on the Kenyan coast about 150km south of one of the top three of Kenya’s richest and most diverse freshwater wetlands – the Tana River Delta. In another WildlifeDirect blog, “The Water Hole”, Samuel Maina has been posting some information already regarding the fight to save this awesome and incredibly special site. We are working together as part of a wider group of conservation organisations fighting a huge sugarcane project (covering an area of over 110,000ha / 270,000 acres – nearly three times the size of Amboseli National Park, x18 the size of Lake Nakuru National Park and almost 1.5 times the area of Shenandoah National Park in the USA!) that would eradicate the delta – and I’m hoping to raise further concern to encourage the Kenya government to save the Delta.

The Tana River Delta is the most amazing wetland and a visit particularly during the time when the migrant birds are packed in there feasting on the vast resources together with flooding when herons and storks are nesting… it is a mind-blowing experience. Roni has visited the Okavango Delta and even she said that doing our waterfowl count in January was a far more radical birding experience than the Okavango. This year during the counts we were walking across open mud flats and saw recent lion spoor and a waterbuck which had obviously been walking happily along only to scent or see the lion and to change direction and leap off in the opposite way! There are also elephant and buffalo and certainly over 800 hippo in the delta – we saw a pod (herd) of what we estimated at 400 in just one spot!

Our waterbird counts for the past two years reached 15,000 water birds of 72 species counted on just one day in January 2007 and a similar number of 71 species again in 2008. Highlights included:

• 1,600 herons and egrets

• a flock of 1,400 African Open-billed Stork,
• 58 Allen’s Gallinules,
• a single flock of 3,500 Ruff,
• 3,200 terns
• flock of 76 African Skimmers…
• and the largest recorded number of Pacific Golden Plover for East Africa – 180 birds (normally seen in ones and two!)

…and that was only covering a small proportion (c.15-20% max) of the whole delta on a random day! There is a major heronry in the delta, where herons and storks come to from all over East Africa to breed and it is a highly important breeding site for fish (and therefore extremely important source of income and nitrition for a large human population). Also, as well as the elephant and lion, there are a lot of buffalo and antelope including an endemic race of Topi found only on a few remaining sites of the East African coast. Late last year some Wild Dog were also seen in the Delta.

River deltas are known for being fragile, dynamic and extremely rich and important wetland systems, flooding in times of good rain and later drying out again. Any small amount of playing with the hydrological systems will upset the delicate natural balance and wreak havoc on the ecosystem. To put sugar plantations right into the heart of the Tana Delta will spell the end of the delta. Sugar is widely known as an ecological desert in itself and the effluent and pollution from the processing plants in Africa is highly damaging as will be the impact of the many 1,000s of workers and others who will be attracted to the area and who will need food, water and somwhere to rid their sewage and rubbish.

It will be a regional natural disaster if this development is allowed to go ahead the way it is currently planned. A strong section of the local community living in the delta, represented by the Lower Tana River Delta Conservation Trust, are fighting it hard as can be read in The Water Hold blog. Several conservation organisations have come together to form a lobby group to seek to stop this project from destroying the delta. The next blog will give further updates on what’s happened and how you can assist.