• Water flowing from outside the park into Hyena Dam, the major polluted area.
• The park is already endangered by pollution, human activities, building in and near the park, the SGR, blocked wildlife corridors and other problems.
Image: COURTESY
Already-threatened Nairobi National Park is further endangered by a major leak of raw sewage near Hyena Dam where water looks like foaming pea soup.
"Nairobi National Park. Stinking like hell. Unreal colors, water green like pea soup. Brilliant blue foam. This is the corner at the entrance of the Hyena dam! What is happening? photographer Paolo Torchio said.
"Why are the competent authorities blind? Hippos, crocodiles, and birds are living inside cesspool but no action is taken. It was hard to breathe while taking those photos.
A preliminary probe by the National Environment Management Authority shows a burst sewer line was directing raw sewage into the park.
Uncollected garbage is also blamed for clogging pipes, causing overflow.
"We have received the complaints. This morning we sent an enforcement team with officers from the Kenya Wildlife Service," Nema director general Mamo Mamo told the Star on Friday.
Investigation is underway to establish the cause of the leak.
Friends of Nairobi National Park on February 2, wrote to Mamo:
"We are extremely concerned at the polluted condition of the water flowing into the Nairobi National Park. The area where there is major water pollution is at Hyena Dam," FoNNaP chairman Gareth Jones said.
Image: REUTERS
The letter was copied to KWS director general John Waweru, the park's senior warden; the Ministry of Tourism and Nema senior environmental officer Joan Micheka.
FoNNaP said the water was flowing from outside the park into a wetland zone that flows into the Hyena Dam, then downstream and eventually into the Athi River.
"We request Nema to act to kindly act rapidly, working together with the Kenya Wildlife Service to avoid further environmental pollution that is already having a negative toxic effect on the animals and plants within the Nairobi National Park," the letter read.
Gazetted in 1946 as Kenya's first National Park through proclamation No 48 of December 16, 1946, the park covers 28,911 acres.
It has breathtaking fauna and flora.
It is home to 400 permanent and migratory bird species, lions, African buffalo, the baboon, the Eastern black rhinoceros, the Southern white rhino, the common zebra, Grant's gazelle.
Other species are Thompson's gazelles, Masai giraffes, elands, impalas, ostriches, jackals, warthogs and waterbucks.
Ironically, FoNNaP wrote the letter on the day Kenya joined the world in observing World Wetlands Day.
FoNNaP said creatures within the park and downstream always benefit from efforts by Nema and KWS to stop water pollution.
KWS Head of Corporate Communications Department Trizer Mwanyika told the Star a substantive report will be released once the probe has been finalised.
The park has not had a management plan since 2010.
It is endangered by increasing construction in and near the park, including buildings and the standard gauge railway, blocked wildlife corridors and pollution.
Tourism CS Najib Balala recently gazetted a new management plan.
In the new plan, KWS wants to address 12 issues facing the world's only park within a city.
The issues are habitat loss and fragmentation in the dispersal areas, a decline in the wildlife population, poaching, human-wildlife conflicts, alien and invasive species, pollution, mining and quarries.
The others are climate change, low park visitation, increased urbanisation, settlement threats on the sheep and ranches, and infrastructure development.
Some of the work KWS has lined up for the park includes fencing, the construction of a high-end ecolodge, improvement of infrastructure, development of a club house, a high-end restaurant (Orpul Place), the establishment of adventure activity concessions and facilitation of alternative activities to traditional game-viewing.
The parastatal is also considering improving the park habitat, coupled with progressively fencing the land, of willing landowners, in the wildlife facility’s buffer zone.
(Edited by V. Graham)