(Posted 06th February 2025)
Courteys of African Elephant News and Dann Okoth, Mongabay
An environmental disaster is unfolding in Isiolo county, in northeastern Kenya, following a recent wildfire outbreak that devastated large swaths of the region, according to experts who are calling for urgent measures to address the consequences of the tragedy.
The area hosts thousands of animal and plant species, including critically endangered white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum).
On Jan. 21st, hundreds of elephants were seen fleeing toward Marti Plateau, at the border with Samburu county to the south, to escape the fire, according to eyewitnesses.
“It is an ecological disaster of epic proportions,” says Mali ole Kaunga, a local conservation group member in Isiolo.
“An entire ecosystem was wiped out in a matter of days,” Kaunga tells Mongabay, adding, “But we are still to come to terms with the real impact of this tragedy.”
According to John Wambua, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) senior assistant director, eastern conservation area, the big animals may have escaped the fire, with thousands of crawling animals and birds not spared.
“We do not have the complete inventory yet, but thousands of crawling animals such as snakes, rodents and some rare bird species and indigenous plants were lost in the fire,” Wambua tells Mongabay.
“Most were burnt to ashes and we may not even account for each one of them at the end of the day,” he adds.
Besides the “big five” ? elephants, lions, leopards, buffalos, rhinos ? Isiolo is also home to Kenya’s rarest animals, including the white rhino, reticulated giraffe (Giraffa reticulata), Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi), Somali ostrich (Struthio molybdophanes) and gerenuk (Litocranius walleri).
The inferno broke out on Jan. 19th in Merti subcounty and quickly spread to other areas including Martaba, Korbesa, Malkagala, Iresaboru, Badana and Sericho, wiping an estimated 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of grazing and rangelands.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to officials from the Kenya Red Cross and the Kenya Wildlife Society (KWS).
Bone-dry conditions occasioned by prolonged drought and winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour (124 mph) saw the fire consume huge swaths of grazing and rangeland in minutes, locals say.
According to Gregory Macharia, Kenya Red Cross regional program officer, a multiagency team comprising his organization, KWS, Kenya Forest Service and the local community was deployed to fight the fire.
“However, our efforts were hampered by lack of proper firefighting equipment to fight fire over such vast areas,” he says.
Instead, the team deployed bulldozers and other heavy equipment to create buffer zones to prevent the fire from spreading.
By the evening of Jan. 24th, fires in Merti, Martaba, Korbesa and Malkagala had been contained, according to Macharia.
While the real impact on wildlife is yet to register, the bearing on communities is immediate.
“We have lost two years’ worth of grazing resources,” Kaunga tells Mongabay, adding, “Hundreds of herders are already stranded with their animals”.
“Soon we will witness conflicts not just between humans and wildlife, but between human and human, as people scramble for scarce resources,” he adds.
In order to prevent “a catastrophe,” he urges the government to enact emergency measures to supply water and animal feed to nearby communities.
For conservationists, the bigger problem is not the fire but the potential environmental fallout in its wake. “We will be in trouble if it doesn’t rain soon,” Wambua notes, adding, “Wildlife will start to move to safer areas — in this case, populated areas to look for food, which will cause human-wildlife conflict.”
On the flip side, herders will likely encroach nearby wildlife sanctuaries looking for grazing resources, he explains.
“Conservancies in Isiolo are holding rare wildlife like the white rhino — if these fragile ecosystems are invaded, the fate of such endangered species hangs in the balance,” Wambua says.
Philip Muruthi, vice president, species conservation and science at the African Wildlife Foundation, notes that although the savanna vegetation is expected to recover quickly from disturbances after the rains around March and April, the wildlife will be displaced and animals that cannot move will most likely perish.
“Endangered species like Grévy’s zebra will be at greater risk of populations being affected than wildlife species with larger populations across their range,” Muruthi tells Mongabay.
Large herbivores like elephants that require large amounts of pasture, and animals that live in swampy areas, will suffer the most, as well as livestock and people — especially in this dry season as they also depend on the scorched areas for grazing, he says.
“Such fires are expected between January and March when temperatures are high within the area,” he says.
Warning that tragedies like this will persist unless variables like climate change that make fire events worse are contained, Wambua is calling for controlled burnings to avoid destructive fires or enhanced grazing patterns to reduce combustible forage during high temperatures.
He calls on authorities to incorporate local and Indigenous people in developing solutions to curb the emerging threats of fire as well as instituting fire management strategies with a landscape approach.
