Activists outraged by Kenyan biofuel plans on fragile wetland

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

NAIROBI (AFP) — Outraged conservationists Monday protested Kenyan plans to grow biofuel crops on a coastal wetland, warning that they will ruin the environment home to 350 species, including endangered ones.

Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Nature Kenya said allowing the planting of sugarcane on more than 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres, 80 square miles) of the Tana River Delta will damage the fragile ecosystem.

Handing over of the delta to state-owned Mumias Sugar Company for sugarcane plantation endangers more than 350 bird species, lions, hippos, nesting turtles and Tana red colobus, one of 25 primates facing extinction worldwide, they said.

The groups commissioned a study in May that concluded there would be "irreversible loss...