• The petitioners say the 117 square kilometre park is the oldest in Kenya, having been created in 1946, and needs to be protected.
• The petition which targets 10,000 people had been signed by 8,510 Friday morning.
More than 8,000 nature lovers have signed a petition asking the Environment ministry to make Nairobi National Park a World Heritage Site.
The petitioners say the 117 square kilometre park is the oldest in Kenya, having been created in 1946, and needs to be protected.
"It is situated in the middle of a fast-growing city and faces significant threats: from land hunger, invasive species, infrastructural competition for land, as well as air, soil and water pollution and in-breeding in the wildlife populations," the petition reads.
The petition which targets 10,000 people had been signed by 8,510 Friday morning.
"The park's splendid diversity of highland habitats are a haven for rhinos, lions and other carnivores, sixteen species of antelope, giraffes, freshwater fish and amphibians and snakes and more species of birds that in the entire British Isles," it reads.
If the petition is successful, the Nairobi Park will join Fort Jesus, Lamu Old Town, Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests, Thimlich Ohinga Archaeological Site on the World Heritage list.
The Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley, Lake Turkana National Park, and Mount Kenya National Park/Natural Forest are inscribed as natural sites.
For a site to be named a World Heritage Site, a state party must demonstrate that it has outstanding universal cultural, historical, natural, and archaeological value.
Only parties to the World Heritage Convention can submit nomination proposals for properties to be considered for inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
The process takes time after the property is submitted and added to the ‘inventory' is known as the Tentative List.
Once a year, the World Heritage Committee meets to decide which sites will be inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The Nairobi National Park is faced with habitat loss, decline in the wildlife population, poaching, human-wildlife conflicts, alien and invasive species, pollution, mining among other issues.
The Kenya Wildlife Service intends to cure some of these problems through proposals contained in its management plan.
KWS is considering improving park habitat, coupled with progressively fencing willing landowners in the park’s buffer zone.
It proposes an integrated land use management in the park's buffer zone and wildlife dispersal areas to achieve the park’s management objectives.
There are several sites that are on the Tentative List.
These are Lake Nakuru National Park, Lake Naivasha, Lake Bogoria National Reserve, the Historic Town of Gedi, the Mfangano-Rusinga Island Complex.
Others are the African Great Rift Valley - the Marakwet Escarpment Furrow Irrigation System.