The Water Hole

Category: Lake Natron, Wetlands, Wildlife | Date: Mar 31 2008 | By: admin

After the scare that the Lesser Flamingo (Phoenicopterus minor) could lose its only successful breeding site in East Africa, Lake Natron, it is a welcome gesture that the government of Kenya is finalizing a Species Action Plan (SAP) for this near-threatened (as per the IUCN Red List) bird, and that this plan is being done according to international guidelines.

How do I know this? Well, I spent last Wednesday and Thursday ‘embedded’ with the technical team that is working on producing this SAP. The two day meeting that I was attending was held at Merica Hotel in Nakuru, just a stone’s throw from the lake that has been made famous by the thousands of flamingos that feed there throughout the year - Lake Nakuru - providing an ambience befitting such a discussion.

The purpose of this meeting was to iron out some pending issues and adopt the draft plan after some changes. This - technically - happened and the plan adopted ‘pending suggested revisions’. In short, the plan is not ready yet but once the technical team sit together again, all they will need to do is to incorporate the changes that were suggested during this meeting.

So why does the Lesser Flamingo need an action plan? This spectacular bird of much ecological and economic value is already classified as Near-Threatened by the IUCN and - despite being the most numerous flamingo species on earth - it is likely to precipitate into the Threatened Species list in a time not so far away from the present. In Kenya, where the bird is largely confined to the Rift Valley soda lakes, the population fluctuates between 279,620 and 1,453,513 (estimates done annually in January).

While in Kenya, these migratory birds are threatened largely by degradation of their very specialized habitat by hydrology and water quality changes (changes in salts concentration in water affects the abundance of their food - microscopic cyanobacteria [algae] and lake bottom diatoms only found in alkaline lakes, saline lagoons and estuaries). This is the most critical threat and largely man-made.

Other threats of high importance, and which the Action Plan is treating with priority, include poisoning (by cyanobacteria toxins) and infectious diseases (such as avian cholera). There are of course other threats - albeit of lower importance but nevertheless significant - including salt extraction and the disturbance of breeding colonies by human activities. These two threats should make you remember the Lake Natron saga. Minor threats include predation, competition with other species for food, human disturbance of non-breeding populations among others.

The SAP is a 10-year plan that will be reviewed regularly over its term. It envisions the long-term survival of the East African population of the birds and contribute towards improving to the conservation status of the global population. specifically it aims at stabilizing the population size and contribute to consistency in distribution.

According to the plan, to get to this state of improved conservation status, Kenya will maintain all key sites in good ecological conditions, stop destruction key non-breeding sites and in sites where the birds have traditionally bred or attempted to breed, reducing the impact of poisoning and disease, creating a flamingo conservation network, and increasing the knowledge available on flamingo ecology (numbers, threats, values, and causes of die-offs).

The technical team is optimistic that this plan will harmonize ongoing conservation actions for this bird and constitute an effective domestication of the International Single Species Action Plan already developed.

The Water Hole hopes that regional issues that also affect the conservation of the flamingo in Kenya, such as the Lake Natron soda extraction project, will be effectively addressed through cooperation between Kenyan other governments in East Africa. It should be remembered that East Africa is home to the largest (75%) of the four recognized Lesser Flamingo populations of the world and hence the most important for conservation.

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Category: Sugar, Tana Delta, Wetlands, Wildlife | Date: Mar 13 2008 | By: admin

I thank all those who posted comments on my post on the Tana Sugar project yesterday. I am encouraged to see that we all would like to keep the Delta environmentally safe. I understand also that we might seem to be against ‘development’ and improving people’s livelihoods but I personally do not see how hiving off 20,000 ha of prime wetland will not affect the entire ecosystem. All I have heard about plantations suggests otherwise. Maybe there is a way that I don’t know of.

I just spoke to Peter Odhiambo, our Wetlands Programme Coordinator who’s also the point man at the Kenya Wetlands Forum (KWF) Secretariat and his opinion is that the comments that the government officers made during their visits are their own opinions. He sees a possibility that NEMA is committed to follow the law regarding environmental consequences of development projects. He is however suspicious as to the composition of the 10-man Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) that is reviewing the comments made against the EIA for the project, and of the fact that NEMA has kept the list away from the public eye.

He however revealed the names of half the team. These names were mentioned in a meeting on 29 February that a team representing the EAWLS/KWF held with NEMA. They include:
1. Prof R Mbuvi of the University of Nairobi (Chair)
2. Dr Njoka of the University of Nairobi
3. Mr Charles Mbara of the University of Nairobi
4. Mr Phillip Wandera of the Catholic University of East Africa, and
5. Anne Macharia of NEMA (Secretary)

Paula, in her comment to yesterdays post, asked who the experts were and I believe with this list your question is half answered. And Paula, I don’t know why KWS is doing an aerial survey. I believe that a full ecosystem (for the area consists of various wetland and forest habitats) assessment should be conducted by field biologists, wetlands experts and others and be weighted against the EIA report before any decision about the fate of the project is made.

What are our bargaining chips? We (EAWLS and KWF) have already submitted our comments to NEMA concerning the inadequacy of the EIA. We have even helped the local people (who mostly fear for the loss of their grazing lands) put their concerns on paper and present them to NEMA. At the moment I am not in possession of scientific reports that have shown the interdependence of the various habitats in keeping the Delta healthy. These would be quite weighty bargaining chips to use. I believe others may have research reports of this kind. Those who may be able to procure such should send them to the KWF.

Thank you Pechir (although I couldn’t trace your comments on Baraza) for the good work you are doing. Together we can ensure that the government sees the wisdom in keeping the Delta safe and should they proceed with the project, it is done in an environmentally viable way and that the plight of pastoralists is fully taken into account. That most ‘still wild’ areas of the world are to be found in pastoralists’ keep (e.g. the Mara) is itself a testimony that these people are good custodians of the natural world.

So, what next? For EAWLS and KWF, we are keeping track of all the steps of the process. As we await the outcome of the review of the comments on EIA, we still demand answers to some vexing questions that have remained unanswered.

This morning, Peter showed me a letter that our Executive Director, Mr Ali Kaka sent to Dr Mwinzi just before the latter went to the Delta over the weekend. The letter essentially voiced the concerns of EAWLS on the constitution of the TAC which I will explain in my next post. The EAWLS/KWF team of Hadley Becha, Dr George Wamukoya, Peter Odhiambo, Jael Ludeki and Rashida Suleiman had met with Mr B M Lang’wen, the Director for Compliance and Enforcement at NEMA. It was during this meeting that NEMA revealed the partial list of the TAC to us.

If you wish to write to the authorities, I suggest you write to Dr A Musya Mwinzi of NEMA on this address: Director General, NEMA, P O Box 67839, Nairobi, KENYA.

You can, in addition, help by donating to our campaigns fund.

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Category: Community, Sugar, Tana Delta, Wetlands, Wildlife | Date: Mar 12 2008 | By: admin

The Kenya Government is now using bait to diffuse local community protests to the proposal to convert some 20,000 hectares of the country’s prime wetland, Tana Delta wetlands, into a sugar plantation and the National Environmental Management Agency (NEMA) seems to have swallowed its share of bait already. The national press reports that NEMA’s Director General, Dr. Muusya Mwinzi, had visited the residents of the Delta last weekend in a mission - according to us at the Water Hole - to regurgitate some of this bait.

Dr Mwinzi was not alone, he was part of the train that the Permanent Secretary (PS) for Finance, Mr Joseph Kinyua, and his Regional Development counterpart, Mr David Stower, had hauled down to the Delta. They had with them a full basket of bait.

‘Mr Finance’ promised the locals that the government would loan them money to purchase at least 15% of the stake in the project, they will become outgrowers, and own a stake in the sugar producing company. The outgrowers will have 4,000 hectares out of the 20,000 ha that the project will put under sugarcane. They were promissed that 20,000 jobs would come out of the project, which, in his view, will support the livelihoods of 3-million people.

The project, according to the EIA I discussed in my previous post, is economically viable but presents serious environmental consequences. Pastoralists, like i said, are the ones most opposed among the communities as they see a huge chunk of their livestock’s pasture dissappearing. The PS Finance dismissed the pastoralists protests as having arisen from ‘excitement’ following the announcement of the project. He openly ‘gave the nod’ to the project.

Dr Mwinzi on the other hand, not wanting to openly chorus the sentiments of the PS, said that the EIA report that stands between the idea and the actualisation of the project is being harmonised by considering the comments that the public submitted to Nema (see previous post). To try and appear serious, he announced that he had constituted a committee of 10 ‘experts’ to review the comments and harmonise them with the EIA report before NEMA can endorse the project. He supported this argument by announcing that the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) would conduct an aerial survey to scope the effect of the project on wildlife before NEMA can finalise the EIA.

We suspect that with such heavy government baiting, the environment is likely to loose. The Kenya Wetlands Forum and EAWLS will however continue to put pressure on NEMA not to give the project an environmental ‘clean bill’ since it is obvious that there will be irreversible environmental damage should the project proceed. We will continue working with our allies within the community and to try and marshall international support to stop this potentially harmful ‘development’.

We need all the support we can get.

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