Kenya Tourism

Kenya pushing for three of its lakes to join the World Heritage Site list

Kenya has submitted Lakes Nakuru, Bogoria and Elementaita for inclusion in the prestigious Unesco World Heritage List, meaning that the country is likely to benefit from global conservation funds.

Being in the World Heritage List means that a cultural site or landscape has been recognised for its unique universal value to humankind.

Kenya already has four sites in the World Heritage List: Lamu Stone Town, the Kaya Forests, Mt Kenya National Park and Lake Turkana National Park.

The three lakes provide unique biodiversity and sustain 75 per cent of the globally threatened population of the Lesser Flamingos, Lesser Kestrel and White-headed Vulture among others.

Flash flood sweeps away elephant research camp in Kenya

A research camp with environmental organization Save the Elephants (STE) in Samburu National Reserve in Kenya fell victim to a flash flood last week, after the Ewaso Ng’iro River broke its banks. Fortunately, none of the researchers or employees were hurt, but the camp lost most of the equipment—including tents, food, computers, and collars—and data in the flood.

Operations Manager Lucy King estimated it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the facility. STE is now seeking donations to help with rebuilding efforts.

“We would like to extend our gratitude to our donors and partners who have already pledged funds for the rebuilding of the facility. They recognize that the elephant research projects we are conducting are too important to halt due to this calamity,” says Operations Manager Lucy King.

Another camp, the Elephant Watch Safari Camp, was also struck, leaving some employees trapped in trees for hours. Tourists and others were able to seek higher ground.

Two bridges in the Samburu National Reserve were also destroyed.

STE was founded by Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the world’s leading elephant experts. The organization works both on elephant research and conservation initiatives.

“It’s nothing short of a disaster, but we will take a deep breath and rebuild,” Iain Douglas-Hamilton told the Telegraph.

Source: Mongabay (http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0308-hance_samburu.html)

Africa’s low cost airline, FLY 540 launches UK sales campaign

Africa’s low cost airline – Fly540 – pronounced Fly Five Forty – is launching a new sales campaign aimed at getting more UK passengers onto its low cost services throughout East Africa.

Fly540 is backed by the giant 100 year old, UK based investment and mining conglomerate, Lonrho PLC and Fly540 plans to become the first pan-African low cost carrier operating to International safety standards.

The airline with its headquarters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, began operations between Nairobi international Airport (Jomo Kenyatta) and Kenya’s second largest city and premier port, Mombasa on 24th November 2006. By summer 2009, Fly540 was already uplifting 20,000 passengers per month and operating to nine airports in Kenya as well as to eleven international destinations: including Entebbe in Uganda and Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Grumeti, Serengeti, Lake Manyara and Mwaza in Tanzania, Juba and Rumbek in Sudan and Bujumburra in Burundi. In 2010 the airline also announced plans to open new hubs in
Angola, Ghana and Zimbabwe.

Fly540 provides daily domestic services to both the Kenyan Coastal regions of Mombassa, Malindi and Lamu as well as to the Western Kenya
tourist circuits of Kisimu, Eldoret, and Kitale, plus the world renowned Maasi Mara Game reserve (as featured in the BBC TV wildlife programme, “Big Cat Diary”).

Daily flights from Nairobi to Zanzibar are becoming increasingly popular and the Nairobi to Kilimanjaro route has been linked with daily services to Lake Manyara and Serengeti for the growing number of adventure seeking holidaymakers who wish to combine game viewing in the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti with climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

The airline has a fleet of six modern turbo prop aircraft plus one regional jet, all offering an ideal mix of comfort, speed and economic operating costs.

The current fleet is as follows:
3 ATR 42-320 aircraft with capacity for 46 passengers.
1 Dash 8-102 aircraft with capacity for 37 passengers
1 Beechcraft 19000D with capacity for 19 passengers
2 all cargo Fokker F27
and the latest addition a Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-200 with capacity
for 50 passengers.

The new CRJ aircraft has initially been deployed on the Nairobi to Entebbe and Bujumbura /Mwanza routes and has enabled Fly540 to reduce the flying time between the two capital cities to 50 minutes.

Further CRJ aircraft and new turboprops are planned to join the fleet during 2010.

Fly540 combine a strong emphasis on quality customer service with a no-frills business concept. The senior management team comprises of highly qualified Kenyan and International staff with many years experience working for global, regional and domestic airlines.
Fly540’s Joint Chief Executive Officers are Don Smith and Neil Steffen. The post of Operations Director is held by Nixon Ooko who worked for 24 years in British Airways and held senior positions in both Kenya and South Africa.

In order to promote Fly540 in the UK market, Fly540 have appointed a specialist UK representative, Flight Directors, to support their UK sales and Marketing initiative.

Source: Breaking Travel News (http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/africas-low-cost-airline-fly-540-launches-uk-sales-campaign/)

Kenya has more than just safaris

Kenya rounds up zebras for starving lions

Kenyan wildlife officials are ferrying thousands of zebras and wildebeest to a park in the country’s south to feed starving lions and hyenas, and prevent a conflict with humans.

The animals will be hauled from four locations to restock Amboseli National Park’s population, which lost 80 percent of its herbivores in a recent drought, said Kentice Tikolo, spokeswoman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.

“It was the worst drought in 26 years,” Tikolo said. “The Amboseli ecosystem was severely affected. … Lots of herbivores died, carnivores don’t have anything to feed on, and have been attacking neighboring livestock.”

The imbalance has sparked a row with villagers who lost animals in the drought and have threatened to kill lions and hyenas preying on remaining livestock.

“There are only 2,000 lions left nationwide, and we are concerned because the numbers are dropping,” the spokeswoman said.

“Maasais are getting angry and threatening to spear them — the human versus wildlife conflict is getting out of hand — and our carnivores are already greatly endangered.”

About 4,000 zebras and 3,000 wildebeest will be transferred to Amboseli. The zebras will go first. The wildebeest will follow, after calving season, Tikolo said. Once at Amboseli, they’re expected to breed and sustain the lions over the long term.

Shipping the animals from Soysambu Conservancy in the Rift Valley and three other nearby locations will cost about $ 1.4 million, according to Tikolo.

The animals are herded into a funnel-shape enclosure using helicopters and loaded into trucks to Amboseli. From there, they are released into the wild, she said.

Tourism is the second-largest source of foreign exchange in the east African nation. About 20 percent of the income comes from tourism, with Amboseli as the second -highest earner, Tikolo said

Lions are among the big five — the list of top wildlife tourist attractions in the nation. Others are elephants, leopards, rhinos and buffalo.

Source: CNN (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/02/11/lions.kenya/)

Poachers kill rare white rhino in Kenya

A group of poachers have killed a southern white rhino, an endangered species whose worldwide population is estimated at just 17,500, the head of Kenya’s wildlife conservation agency said on Monday.

The poachers killed the rhino in a privately owned ranch in central Kenya on Dec. 28 and cut off its horns, said Julius Kipng’etich, the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tracked down the suspected poachers and suspected buyers on Sunday and caught them with two rhino horns weighing more than 7 kilograms (16 pounds) and 647,000 Kenyan shillings ($8,500) in cash, which is believed to be part of the money the poachers were paid for the horns, Kipng’etich told journalists.

He said in total 12 suspects, all of them Kenyans, have been arrested. Other suspects escaped and rangers are still tracking them, Kipng’etich said.

The late December killing occurred about a week after four of the world’s last eight known northern white rhinos were brought to Kenya, where officials hope they will reproduce and save their subspecies.

Rhino horns sell for more than gold on a per-weight basis, and have been the reason for a huge poaching problem against the species. The horns are used to make dagger handles in the Middle East and for medicinal purposes in Asia.

The rhino is labeled as one of the big five, a category of must-see animals while on safari – the buffalo, elephant, leopard and lion being the others.

In the late 1970s and 1980s poachers decimated Kenya’s rhinos, of which there are only two species in the country, white and black rhinos. Before the rampant poaching Kenya had an estimated 20,000 black rhinos in 1973. Today, black rhinos number only 610, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.

White rhinos are even more endangered in Kenya with only 240 in the country.

The white rhino’s name comes from the Dutch word “weit,” meaning wide, which refers to its wide, square muzzle, adapted for grazing. The white rhino, whose real color is gray, has a pronounced hump on the neck and a long face.

The black, or hook-lipped, rhino has a thick, hairless, gray hide. Both species have two horns, the longer of which sits at the front of the nose.

Source: Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010400861.html)

Regional ports plan meeting to promote cruise tourism

Climate change robs Mt. Kenya of spectacular glaciers

Those with long memories of how Mt. Kenya once stood tall and proud, the peaks covered by glittering glaciers, may have to think again today, when seeing the mountain either from the ground or from the air. Nearly half of the ice mass recorded a hundred years ago has since melted away altogether or is at the very brink of disappearing, while the remaining ice fields have shrunk considerably over the past decades.

Mountain guides have expressed their concerns to the Kenyan media, raising the alarm levels over the impact of climate change so inflicted on Africa by the massive carbon and other emissions of the industrialized world. The other ice caps in eastern Africa on Mt. Kilimanjaro and across the Rwenzori Mountains are also shrinking at a record pace, and it is feared that in a worst-case scenario, the glaciers could be gone anytime between the next 10 to 20 years.

Alongside those facts, communities depending on the mountains as a source of water for domestic use or irrigation – often the only source – are becoming more and more affected, as drawing water from equally-shrinking streams and rivers is becoming a daily struggle for them.

Thankfully good old Hemingway wrote his “Snow on Kilimanjaro” when that most famous of snow cover was still there and when the ice cap was still what it was supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan government defined the initial start-up cost to combat the fallout of climate change already visible at US$3 billion, which will eventually rise to US$20 billion, if the country is to adopt green technologies and repair the damages already done to forests and other ecosystems through extreme weather conditions.

Kenya, as the whole of Africa did, prepared for the Copenhagen Summit through widespread consultations with civil society organizations, green groups, environmentalists, and conservationists to come up with a country strategy, which will also be part of the regional strategy on climate change the East African Community as a whole is developing and will be presenting to the developed world with a bill attached to it.

Source: eTurboNews (http://www.eturbonews.com/13493/climate-change-robs-mt-kenya-spectacular-glaciers)