NAIVASHA: East Africa’s long-running drought has devastated livestock and wildlife in Kenya, but now a spurt of rains is killing animals too. Wardens at the Hell’s Gate National Park, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, say hungry animals ate too much when rains finally fell on parched lands in recent days.
“Once the grass sprouted, the animals fed excessively and many died owing to bloat,” Charles Muthui, senior warden at the park about an hour north of Nairobi, told Reuters.
At least 70 animals in the wildlife park, mostly gazelles, have died from over-eating, the wardens say.
A visit to Hell’s Gate, one of a string of wildlife parks popular with tourists, shows a landscape dotted with carcasses of gazelles, zebras and buffaloes amid the newly-green vegetation. Birds of prey feast on the dead animals.
Muthui said death rates in the park were also exacerbated by farms nearby blocking access to fertile land round Lake Naivasha where animals had fed during past droughts.
“The farms have blocked corridors...leaving no vegetation for wild animals,” he said.
Drought has been devastating east Africa since late last year, killing dozens of people and tens of thousands of animals.—Reuters
