Nairobi National Park - Kenya

Nairobi National Park is a countrywide park in south-vital Kenya. Established in 1946, it became an undertaking of Mervyn Cowie, a conservationist who pioneered the countrywide park device in Kenya, and hooked up because the nation`s first. It is placed about 7 kilometres (four mi) south of the middle of Nairobi, the nation`s capital and biggest metropolis. Only a fence separates the park`s flora and fauna from the metropolis, with Nairobi's skyscrapers supplying a backdrop to the park. The proximity of the city and herbal environments has brought on conflicts among the animals and the nearby population and threatens animals' migration routes. While Cowie did now no longer expect the tremendous increase of Nairobi, the sort of big metropolis after an animal reserve provides particular issues to each guy and flora and fauna. These issues, if treated successfully, can make Nairobi National Park a version withinside the large context of mans' dating with nature. 

Despite its proximity to civilization and its fairly small size, Nairobi National Park boasts a big and sundry flora and fauna population. The dry transitional savanna environment offers for such mammals because of the black rhinoceros, elephants, gazelles, giraffes, lions, zebras, and diverse species of antelope. There also are several reptiles and masses of species of birds. The Nairobi Animal Orphanage, based in 1963 with the reason of saving orphaned elephants and rhinos and freeing them to return to the wild, is placed withinside the park.

 

History of Nairobi National Park - Kenya

British colonists arrived withinside the region wherein the park is placed withinside the past due 1800s. At this time, the Athi plains east and south of what these days Nairobi had abundant flora and fauna. Nomadic Maasai lived and herded their farm animals some of the flora and fauna. Kikuyu human beings farmed the forested highlands above Nairobi. As Nairobi grew—it had 14,000 citizens through 1910—conflicts between human beings and animals increased. Residents of the metropolis carried weapons at night time to defend themselves in opposition to lions. People complained that giraffes and zebras walked on and ruined their flower beds. Animals had been stepped by step constrained to the expansive plains to the west and south of Nairobi, and the colonial authorities set this region apart as a recreation reserve. Settlers from Nairobi include Isak Dinesen, writer of Out of Africa, who rode horses amongst gazelles, impala, and zebras on this reserve (Morell 1996).

The conservationist Mervyn Cowie became born in Nairobi. Returning to Kenya after a nine-yr absence in 1932, he became alarmed to peer that the number of recreation animals at the Athi plains had dwindled. Expanding farms and farm animals had taken the area of recreation. He later recalled this area as a paradise that became speedy disappearing. At this time, the region that could later emerge as Nairobi National Park became a part of the Southern Game Reserve. Hunting became now no longer authorized withinside the reserve, however, almost every different activity, which includes farm animals grazing, dumping, or even bombing through the Royal Air Force became allowed. Cowie started to marketing campaign for the established order of a countrywide park device in Kenya. The authorities fashioned a committee to have a look at the matter. 

Officially opened in 1946, Nairobi National Park became the primary countrywide park hooked up in Kenya (Brett 1995, 11). Masai pastoralists had been eliminated from their lands when the park became created (Porteous 2001, 132). Cowie became named as director of Nairobi National Park and held this role till 1966. In 1989, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi burned 12 heaps of ivory on a domain withinside the park as a gesture to steer the arena to halt the ivory trade. The hearthplace became supposed as an announcement of the Government's political will to prevent the poaching that has decreased Kenya's elephant herds to 17,000 from 65,000 in 1979.[3] This occasion in the end stepped forward Kenya's conservation and flora and fauna safety image.

 

Geography of Nairobi National Park - Kenya

Nairobi National Park placed approximately 7 kilometres (four mm) from the middle of Nairobi, covers a place of 117.21 km² (45.26 sq mi) (28,963 acres) and is one of the smaller of Africa's countrywide parks (Brett 1995, 11). The park levels in altitude from 1,533 to 1,760 meters (5,030 - 5,774 ft)[1] and has a dry climate. It is the best-covered part of the Athi-Kapiti environment, making up much less than 10 per cent of this environment (Prins 2000, 142). The park has a various variety of habitats and species. The park's northern, eastern, and western barriers are enclosed through an electric powered fence a good way to hold the flora and fauna from roaming into the metropolis. Its southern boundary is fashioned through the Mbagathi River. This boundary isn't fenced and is open to the Kitengela Conservation Area that's placed straight away south of the park, and the Athi-Kapiti plains. There is a sizable motion of big ungulate species throughout this boundary.

 

Flora

The park`s most important surroundings are open grass undeniable with scattered Acacia bushes. The western uplands of the park have highland dry woodland with stands of Olea Africana, Croton dichogamous, Brachylaena hutchinsii, and Calodendrum. The decreased slopes of those regions are grassland. Themeda, Cypress, Digitaria, and Cynodon species are observed in those grassland regions. There also are scattered yellow-barked Acacia xanthophloea. There is a riverine woodland alongside the everlasting river withinside the south of the park. There are regions of damaged bush and deep rocky valleys and gorges in the park. The species withinside the valleys are predominantly Acacia and Euphorbia candelabrum. Other tree species encompass Apodytes dimidiate, Canthium schimperiana, Elaeodendron buchananii, Ficus Ariocarpus, Aspilia mossambicensis, Rhus natalensis, and Newtonia species. Several plant life that develops at the rocky hillsides is precise to the Nairobi location. These species encompass Euphorbia brevitorta, Drimia calcarata, and Murdannia clarkeana. 

 

Fauna

The park has a huge and various flora and fauna population. Species observed withinside the park encompass African buffalo, baboon, black rhinoceros, Burchell`s zebra, cheetah, Coke’s hartebeest, Grant’s gazelle, hippopotamus, leopard, lion, Thomson’s gazelle, eland, impala, Masai giraffe, ostrich, vulture, and waterbuck. The park has an excessive variety of chook species, with as many as 500 everlastings and migratory species withinside the park. Dams have created a synthetic habitat for birds and aquatic species.

Herbivores, along with wildebeest and zebra, use the Kitengela conservation location and migration hall to the south of the park to attain the Athi-Kapiti plains. They disperse over the plains withinside the moist season and go back to the park withinside the dry season. The awareness of flora and fauna withinside the park is finest withinside the dry season, while regions outdoor the park have dried up. Small dams constructed alongside the Mbagathi River supply the park with greater water sources than the outdoor regions and entice water structured herbivores at some stage in the dry season. The park is the northern restrict for dry season flora and fauna migrations.

The David Sheldrick Trust runs a sanctuary withinside the park that hand-rears orphaned elephant and rhinoceros calves and later releases them again into stable sanctuaries. Orphaned and ill animals are delivered to the sanctuary throughout Kenya. The sanctuary, which becomes opened in 1963, is close to the park’s major entrance. It becomes installed with the aid of using Daphne Sheldrick after the death of her husband, the anti-poaching warden of Tsavo National Park. (Hodd 2002, 115-117). Nairobi National Park is once in a while known as Kifaru Ark, which means “Rhinoceros Sanctuary” (Bailey 2007, 60). It is one in all of Kenya’s maximum a hit rhinoceros sanctuaries, and it’s miles one in all only some parks wherein traffic may be sure of seeing a black rhinoceros in its herbal habitat.