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WORLD NEWS Tuesday 29 November 2016

Controversial Kenyan railway plan divides conservationists

Amid protests over the rail- headquarters are being servation and habitat for
way, a coalition of Kenyan planned. wildlife and biodiversity.”
conservationists has ob- Akshay Vishwanath, chair- But conservationists associ-
tained a court order stop- man of Friends of Nairobi ated with the government,
ping construction within National Park, which is part including the park manag-
the park until an environ- of the coalition of conser- ers, Kenya Wildlife Service,
mental impact assessment vation groups hoping to have backed the project.
is completed by Kenya’s stop the railway from pro- “It is very clear what the
National Environmental ceeding through the park, constitution requires and
Management Authority, or said they are concerned I believe everything that
NEMA, and is considered any incursion into the pro- KWS and the railways is do-
by the court. tected area will compro- ing are within the bounds
A preliminary report by mise the park’s integrity. and limits of the constitu-
NEMA said the railway will “It should not go in, over or tion,” Kenya Wildlife Service
have no adverse effect under the national park,” Chairman Richard Leakey,
on the park and its wildlife, Vishwanath said. who formally announced
drawing the ire of indepen- “There is a reason there are the railway would be per-
dent groups that accused national parks, you know. mitted to cross over the
A train returns from transporting ballast used in the construc-
tion of the Nairobi-Mombasa railway, and passes through a cut the government agency of They are protected areas, park last September, told a
leading to an existing bridge that goes across a corner of Nairo- corruption. More protests protected for a certain news conference. q
bi National Park in Nairobi, Kenya. A controversial Chinese-built to march on the NEMA land use, and that is con-
railway project involving an even larger 6km bridge that would
go all the way over the beloved protected area in Kenya’s cap-
ital has divided conservationists in this East African country.
(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

KHALED KAZZIHA coast. The estimated cost
Associated Press of the railway line is $3.8 bil-
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A lion, with 90 percent of the
controversial Chinese-de- financing provided by Chi-
signed railway that would na Exim Bank.
go over a beloved protect- The project’s engineers say
ed wildlife park in Kenya’s the most affordable route
capital has divided conser- will bring the railway across
vationists in this East African Nairobi park and are build-
country known for its safari ing a 6-kilometer (4-mile)
tourism. bridge over the national re-
Some are staging protests serve, at an elevation that
even as other wildlife ex- they say will not interfere
perts insist the project is en- with wildlife movements.
vironmentally sound. Chinese companies are
Nairobi enjoys a reputation building the railway, envis-
as the wildlife capital of the aged as a modern alterna-
world thanks to the expan- tive to the colonial-era line
sive Nairobi National Park, from the coast.
which in 1946 became It is planned that the rail-
Kenya’s first sanctuary for way will eventually be ex-
wildlife. tended to link Nairobi to
Its 117 square kilometers Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi
(45 sq. miles) of wilderness and South Sudan.
abuts the city, and is a key Those who support the proj-
attraction for visitors who ect, including the Kenyan
are able to see herds of gi- government and railway
raffe or zebra roaming free authorities, say the railway
with Nairobi’s skyline clearly is vital for Kenya’s eco-
outlined behind them. nomic development, but its
The Kenya Railway Corpo- detractors argue that the
ration is in the process of project is being rushed for
building a new 600-kilome- political reasons and with-
ter (370-mile) railway to link out sufficient consideration
Nairobi to the port of Mom- of its threat to the country’s
basa on the Indian Ocean wildlife.