Climate fears in Kenya
2007-11-01 12:33
Nairobi - The discovery in Kenya of
a new population of monkeys far from their normal habitat is a
sign of how climate change may already be changing Africa's
ecology, a leading conservationist said on Wednesday.
The white-bearded De Brazza's monkeys were found in the
Great Rift Valley, a place they had never been spotted before,
Richard Leakey, a prominent white Kenyan credited with ending
the slaughter of the nation's elephants, told Reuters in
Nairobi.
"That is telling us a lot about the climate change
scenarios we are looking at now," he said. "It puts climate change as the most critical consideration as we plan for the future."
The monkeys had moved into an area of forest which had
dried
out as Kenya's climate had become more arid.
Africa is expected to be hit hardest by global warming
blamed on carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and
modern lifestyles in rich countries.
It is also the continent least ready to cope with the
droughts, floods and extreme weather predicted by scientists.
Leakey, whose palaeontologist father, Louis, caused a
radical rethink of human evolution with key fossil finds in
east Africa, said African governments lacked funds to do their own climate change studies, and so had to rely on researchers who
he said were typically more focused on temperate regions.
But he said he had witnessed dramatic ecological changes in
northern Kenya himself, including a 15m fall in
the level of Lake Turkana over the last four decades. African
leaders were not taking the climate threat seriously, he added.
Governments must be urged to save indigenous forests, plant
trees, utilise rainwater and ban charcoal burning, he said.
"Why do we think that we are somehow not going to have to
deal with this issue?" he asked.