Beauty within our borders

Water falls at Paradise lost .PHOTO: Mary Mwangi

PHOTO: Mary Mwangi

Entrance to Paradise Lost Caves.

PHOTO: Mary Mwangi

Saving water is securing our future

Saving water is securing our future

 Story By Wanyua Mary.

Every day, millions of people across a spacious swathe of Kenya struggle to get access to clean and safe drinking water. Lack of which continues to claim the lives of millions of people every year while condemning millions more to a life of poor health and diminished prospect.

There is no resource more precious than water. However, this is the most misused, abused, misallocated, and misunderstood resource in Kenya. Safe drinking water, healthy and intact natural ecosystems, and a stable food supply are a few of the things at stake as our water supply is put under greater and greater stress.

Many people have had water-saving etiquette pumped into them time and again, so hopefully we can make a good case for conserving our water through everyday water-saving strategies as well as putting in place long term measures that will ensure that Kenya will never go dry.

Let’s not wait to be educated by our government and or local organization but lets take the initiative of seeking the solutions facing us. If every Kenyan can learn how to use water sustainably as well as take the initiative of conserving and protecting our catchments, lack of water can be history.

As we have all witnessed, many people still don’t value our catchments hence the increased cases of forest fires. Unless strict measures are put in place our forest, wildlife and water will all be a done deal condemning us to a life of misery.

As we celebrate the World Water Day, I urge all Kenyans to mark this day by planting an indigenous tree as an effort to compensate for the ones lost by the Mt. Kenya inferno.

Rivers Rehabilitation Slideshow: Maryanne’s trip to Naivasha, Kenya was created by TripAdvisor. See another Naivasha slideshow. Create your own stunning slideshow with our free photo slideshow maker.

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Rivers Rehabilitation Slideshow: Maryanne’s trip to Nairobi, Kenya was created by TripAdvisor. See another Nairobi slideshow. Create your own stunning slideshow with our free photo slideshow maker.

WILDLIFE

Impalas grazing peacefully. PHOTO: Wanyua Mary

Warthogs and impalas feeding on fresh grass after a wildfire.PHOTO: Wanyua Mary

THE IMPALA

Impala feeding on the fresh grass shoots in Naivasha

THE IMPALA

Impalas are medium-sized antelopes that roam the savanna and light woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. In the rainy season, when food is plentiful, they may gather in large herds of several hundred animals to browse on grasses and herbs, bushes, shrubs, and shoots.

CHARACTERISTICS

 Impala is reddish-brown with white hair inside the ears, over each eye and on the chin, upper throat, under-parts and buttocks. A narrow black line runs along the middle of the lower back to the tail, and a vertical black stripe appears on the back of each thigh. Impalas have unique brushlike tufts of black hair that cover a scent gland located just above the heel on each hind leg.

TERRITORY

When food is plentiful, adult males will establish territories of up to two hundred females and young ones and will chase away bachelor males that follow. A male impala tries to prevent any female from leaving his territory by ensuring that he establishes his territory in a foodrich area. During the dry seasons, territories are abandoned, as herds must travel farther to find food. Large, mixed tranquil herds of females and males are then formed while young male impalas who have been made to leave their previous herd form bachelor herds of around thirty individuals. Males able to dominate their herd are contenders for assuming control of a territory through battles in which the winner takes up the role of heading the territory.

BREEDING

In East Africa young are born year round, but birth peaks usually coincide with the rains. The breeding season of impalas, also called rutting, begins toward the end of the wet season in May. The entire affair typically lasts approximately three weeks. Though the young are usually born after 6–7 months, the mother has the ability to delay giving birth for an additional month if conditions are harsh. When giving birth, the female leaves the herd and seeks a secluded spot to bear her fawn. After which she cleans the fawn and eats the afterbirth. If the fawn is born at a time when there are few other young around, the mother will stay with it in a secluded spot for a few days or even leave it lying out for a week or more before returning to the herd. If there are many other fawns, she may take hers back to the herd in a day or two, where a nursery group  forms and the fawn will go to its mother only to nurse and when predators are near. This is because predators have more difficulty selecting an individual from a nursery group; hence the fawns are safer there. Fawns are suckled for four to six months. Males who mature are forced out of the group and will join bachelor herds.

PREDATOR ATTACKS

When frightened or startled, the whole herd starts leaping about to confuse their predator. They can jump distances more than 10 meters and 3 meters high. Impalas can reach running speeds of about 90 km/h to escape their predators. When escaping from predators, they releases a scent from their glands on their heels, which helps them stay together. This is done by performing a high kick of their hind legs.

DIET

Impala is able to both graze and browse; the impala has both a greater and more consistent food supply than animals that do either one or the other. It eats young grass shoots in the wet season and herbs and shrubs during the dry season.

Did You Know?

• The female is similar to the male but does not have horns. The male's graceful lyre-shaped horns are 18 to 37 inches long.
• During periods of intense mating the male vocalizes loudly, making a sound between a lion's roar and a dog's bark. Exhausted by such activity, males seldom can hold their territories for more than a few months at a time.

Lake Naivasha chokes under the water hyacinth

Lake Naivasha chokes under the water hyacinth

Story By Wanyua Mary

Lake Naivasha is facing a serious threat, thanks to the water hyacinth, a deadly weed that has wreaked havoc to tourist hotels, flower farms, marine transport and fishing activities in the basin.

While there are other threats to the lake such as overfishing and pollution of the lake waters, the hyacinth has so far been the strangest phenomenon. The weed is continually blocking fish landing sites and communal water points along the lakeshore.

The weed, scientifically known as Eichoirnia Crassippes, is found in lakes, swamps, dams and riverine wetland throughout the main drainage systems of Africa. The noxious weed is continually shocking life out of Kenya’s most economically potential lakes:-Lake Naivasha and Lake Victoria. Scientists, however, believe that the water hyacinth originated from the Amazon basin and brought to East Africa as a pot plant that later found its way into the lake waters. Its rapid proliferation has been blamed on the emission of untreated industrial effluents and agrochemicals into the lake.

The proliferation of the hyacinth is straightforwardly credited to the enrichment of the water environment by the effluent from the expanding agricultural activities around the lake and in the upper catchment, says Dr John Githaiga a conservation biologist at University of Nairobi. Dr Githaiga adds that the continued infestation of the weed could result in food insecurity as it blocked access to fishing ground and could also have great effect on Tourism in the Basin.

The hyacinth has been spreading very fast over the lake and interfering with light penetration, dissolved oxygen, fish breeding sites, landing beaches and ecology especially due to increasing water levels in the lake. The influx of fertilizer and sediments facilitates the rapid growth of the weeds.

The hyacinth forms a mat of vegetation so thick that fishermen cannot launch their boats or bring fish to market on the shore. Sunlight does not filter through the plants, so native plants in the lake don’t get the light they need. The die-off of native plants affects fish and other aquatic life. Water hyacinth can also sap oxygen from the water until it creates a “dead zone” where plants and animals can no longer survive. Typically, only aggressive measures can control the fast-growing plant.

Conservationists argue that the weed can be controlled by mechanical means manpower and machines, but this has mostly been unsuccessful since the weed grows faster than mechanical clearance can cope with it. Though various herbicides are also effective, they could have significant risks for other wetland biodiversity. Some have continue to say that the destruction of the weed will lead to loss of billion of shillings since the weeds can be used in production of organic fertilizers and biogas

Urgent measures need to be put in place to control the rapid growth of the deadly water hyacinth before more devastating effects are experienced. The farmers in the upper catchment in the basin are encouraged to sustainably use their land to reduce the effluent of fertilizers and sediments in the lake which catalyses the growth of the weed.