Council to reject planned hotels around Amboseli

Written by Solomon Mburu
22-June-2007

The Kajiado County Council has rejected plans to build hotels and lodges near Amboseli National Park, saying it would cause environmental degradation.

Council chairman Tarayia ole Kores said the council would hold back the developments, which it fears could hurt the park’s fragile ecosystem.
“All developers will have to come to us for approval,” said Mr Kores.

Amboseli, which is Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS’s second highest earning park brought in Sh420 million in the last financial year. Only Lake Nakuru earned more, with Sh446 million .

But the council says the park has been threatened by developments mushrooming outside the park boundaries following subdivision of community group ranches that surround the park.

KWS assistant director for the southern region, Wilson Korir, said hotels, lodges and small towns coming up around the 392 square-kilometre park were threatening to cut off wildlife migration corridors.

The Kimana Tikono group ranch, which occupies the area east of Amboseli was a formerly a vast ranch that has been sub-divided into more than 800 pieces of land with title deeds.

He said land owners had sold pieces of their properties to developers who are planning to build hotels and lodges there.

“In the last two years, there has been a mushrooming of tourist facilities in this area,” Mr Korir told Business Daily. “On the two-kilometre stretch from the park’s main gate to the Kimana gate, one lodge has already been built on wildlife migratory route while two others are planned to come up close to it.”

KWS fears that the growth in tourism will attract more developers and threaten wildlife.

As the ranches continue to be split up, small settlements and unplanned townships are beginning to spring around the park and could surround it, he said.

“In 50 years to come, these settlements can lock up the park as is the case with the Nairobi National Park.”

The council chairman said the local authority would halt such “substandard” developments once a plan for Amboseli’s management is officially instituted.

Amboseli in the Maasai language means “place of dust” and hints at the delicate nature of the park ecosystems.

The area is almost arid, but for three swamps fed by springs from Mr Kilimanjaro, which Mr Korir said are a “lifeline of the Ambosli and attract a host of wildlife to the park.”

The wildlife is the biggest attraction for the small park. Amboseli’s 1,500 elephants, are famed as the most studied in the world, each of them named and characterised by researchers.

Other fauna in the park include of wildebeest, buffalos, zebras and a host of other smaller animals.

But Mr Korir said despite their numbers, most animals come to the park only to drink at the swamps in the early morning and evening hours, spending their nights in surrounding ranchland.

The nature of the park’s animal life makes the need for corridors to allow regular movement of the animals in and out.

“Changing land use in the Maasai-owned group ranches that surround the park are now posing a great risk which experts fear may disrupt the areas’ ecosystem and the movement of wildlife,” the KWS official said, adding that some land was already being sold for agricultural use. To help mitigate the looming disaster, KWS has been helping area communities start their own wildlife conservancies, and earn money from hosting tourists.

One of them, the Kimana Tikono Group Ranch has set aside 10,000 hectares where KWS has helped create a conservancy.
The community collects gate fees from tourists entering the conservancy. And African Safari club, which operates a lodge within the park, pays the group bed night charges plus a monthly rent of Sh300,000.

This programme is hoped will help to maintain the vast rangelands that surround the Amboseli and thus protect its survival.

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“In the last two years, there has been a mushrooming of tourist facilities in this area,” Mr Korir told Business Daily. “On the two-kilometre stretch from the park’s main gate to the Kimana gate, one lodge has already been built on wildlife migratory route while two others are planned to come up close to it.”

I personally cannot believe that they are allowing this after all meetings and time spent by so many people to try and get them to understand that the more they build the worse the whole situation will be.
They really do not give a bloody damn of what is going on in Amboseli and I am sorry for my strong words on this website but it really annoys me that they are willing to ask financial aid and help from the globe then they go and increase park fee but are still BLOODY greedy in getting more hotels built on the corridoor areas and Amboseli - for them more taxes and park fee...- when they actually state that this is a danger.

They should have stopped all this buildings 20 years ago - not now; too damn late and it will be a miracle to change this.
I have walked and flown over that migration path and they are killing it -

nico:

If I may, please let me play devil's advocate. If you were a wild animal wouldn't you feel safer walking through a wildlife lodge/camp than through an area, albeit perhaps with a garden, where the people would spear you, shoot poison arrows at you or chase after you with pangas? I just think of Satao where the animals walk right up past my tent to get to the waterhole. Lions, zebra, waterbuck, kongoni, impala, giraffe, hippos, elephant and many other animals come daily. They don't seem to be afraid of the camps/lodges

I know ideally they would move all people away from the corridor areas. However, sadly I doubt this is going to happen. Thus is putting a small lodge/camp a better solution than the Maasai with their shambas?

Your opinion please.

Depends on who is running the lodges and what type of managment there is. Satao has probably the best reputation as a lodge in Kenya - if not one of the best in Africa.
I can guarantee you there are some lodge owners that do not care at all - just interested in bottom line.

The larger elephants do not wish to wonder through gardens and be close to humans; they would rather walk through their natural coridoor which has always been there.
Kimana area is a real problem and issue that no one is address 100% -

I think what Nico is trying to say is that Amboseli ecosystem is already highly over-burdened by human activities. Allowing further lodge/camp development translates to more bednights which equals more minibuses, more tourists, more traffic, more environmental degradation, more flora destruction, more desertification, more wildlife loss.....you get the point!

I think the last time I was in Amboseli was when i was in my teens (some 2 decades ago!) and already then the environmental degradation, particularly with regards plant life was evident. The FIRST PRIORITY in Natural Resource protection is the SOIL!! Without a healthy SOIL BASE, plant life and animal life cannot survive......all parks and reserves have a Management Plan which states the areas recommended maximum "carrying capacity" in terms of human visitors. This is NOT being observed in African countries that are hungry for the mighty $$$$

bwanamich:

I agree with you completely. However, I wonder if the soil in Amboseli was ever good. I don't know the answer to that, do you? At least now that they have stopped off-road driving some things have improved a little bit. But I doubt if even NO people or vehicles were allowed in the park if the soil could recover. Just don't have the answers.

I also have a conflict over the "leave everything as is" in the parks. I understand that if there is a body in the park, it will deteriorate, disintegrate and supposedly put minerals back into the earth, same with trees and rocks. However, if you have ever looked at a large tree limb down in your back yard, you realize that nothing will/can grow under it. It does prevent new growth of grass and plants. Thus when I see many dead trees down in certain areas of the park, I wonder if it might be different without them.