THREAT TO KENYAN RIVER
Destruction of the Mau Forest is causing the Mara River to dry up and lose its crocodiles.
Renowned worldwide as a prime location for watching the migration of the wildebeest, the Mara River could dry up permanently in a few years if current rates of deforestation and climate change trends continue, experts have warned.
The river has lost 70 per cent of its water mass in recent years, leading to a huge decline in Nile crocodiles, which play an important role in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem and are a tourist spectacle, too.
“We believe that deforestation of the Mau Forest on a major tributary to the Mara River is the major cause of the problem,” says Victor Wasanga, a reptile expert at the National Musuems of Kenya. “Frequent droughts and human activity have turned the Mara into a seasonal river.”
Wasanga says that the Mau Forest had lost about half its tree cover and that reforestation through tree-planting would take decades to reverse the problem.
“Crocodile numbers have declined by 85 per cent,” he adds. "There are just 15,000 crocodiles left in the basin.”
That’s compared with an estimated 100,000–150,000 a decade ago. Since 2011 alone, some 20,000 have been lost.
The impact of tree loss in the Mau Forest is being felt in other ways. Scientists say there is less vegetation cover in the Greater Serengeti than five years ago.
Bernard Agwanda, a mammalogist at the National Museums of Kenya, says his research showed that loss of vegetation could begin to have a real impact on herbivore numbers in two to five years.
“As the number of wildebeest declines, it affects the whole ecosystem,” Agwanda says.
Fears that the Mara was drying up stretch back at least as far as 2009. Now those fears look set to become reality.