Aberdare, Kenya, Feb 7 (AFP\/APP): A fire that raged for two days in Kenya’s Aberdare National Park has been extinguished after burning through hundreds of hectares of wilderness, a government forest official said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The blaze started Saturday and dozens of forest rangers, firefighters and volunteers had struggled to control the fire from spreading, as suspicions of arson emerged.<\/p>\n
The park was etched in history when Britain’s Elizabeth II, then a princess on a 1952 visit to Kenya, received news of her father’s death while staying at the Treetops hotel, a remote game-watching lodge built high into a tree in the Aberdare forest.<\/p>\n
“The fire is completely suppressed,” Samuel Ihure, the regional head of the Kenya Forest Service, told AFP, adding that roughly 600 hectares (1,480 acres) of bushland was torched.<\/p>\n
Rhino Ark, a conservation charity in Kenya, earlier said it had sent in helicopters to conduct aerial surveys of the area to estimate the extent of damage to the forest cover.<\/p>\n
“Thirty-five trained firefighters have been deployed by chopper on the southern fireline,” the group said on Twitter Monday.<\/p>\n
“We have firefighters who are doing a decent job up there. So far so good, they are managing to control it but it has not been completed,” Rhino Ark official Adam Mwangi told AFP.<\/p>\n
“Definitely it is a fire caused by human activities,” Mwangi said, as speculation mounted about the possibility of arson.<\/p>\n
The park lies some 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the capital Nairobi in the Aberdare mountain range.<\/p>\n
It is home to spectacular waterfalls and lush bamboo jungles as well as a variety of wildlife including leopards, elephants and critically endangered black rhinos.<\/p>\n
The Aberdares are the third highest mountain range in Kenya, reaching a summit of just over 4,000 metres (over 13,100 feet).<\/p>\n
In recent days, concern has grown over a contentious proposal before parliament which could allow politicians to determine if public forest can be carved out and handed over to private interests.<\/p>\n
The amendment to the Forest Conservation and Management Act — reforms passed after decades of rampant land clearing — has roused significant community anger and sparked fears that it could result in unchecked logging and environmental destruction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aberdare, Kenya, Feb 7 (AFP\/APP): A fire that raged for two days in Kenya’s Aberdare National Park has been extinguished after burning through hundreds of hectares of wilderness, a government forest official said on Monday. The blaze started Saturday and dozens of forest rangers, firefighters […]<\/p>\n
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