A huge fire has erupted at the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest in Kilifi County, the Kenya Red Cross has said.
Fire department engines on Friday, September 27, 2024, were seen rushing to the forest to contain the inferno, which according to the Global Forest Watch, there have been 341 fire incidents in the year 2024 alone.
“A huge bushfire has erupted around Mongotini village in Kilifi, within the Arabuko Forest. The County Fire Brigade, Kenya Red Cross and local community members are working to contain the blaze. No casualties have been reported so far,” the Kenya Red Cross said.
This comes just weeks after a fire consumed more than 1,480 acres of bushland in the Aberdare National Park in August.
While the firefighters, volunteers and Non-Governmental Organisations mobilized their staff to contain the fire through fire engines and helicopters, the inferno lasted two days before it was suppressed.
The fire comes just months after Google announced an AI-powered to provide accurate information on wildfires by using satellite images to detect and outline the exact boundaries of the forest fires.
With the new tool, information could easily be gleaned from a direct search on the browser or Google Maps to determine the location of a fire and the extent of the damage.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says the emergence of wildfires is set to increase as global warming occurs following the burning of fossil fuels around the world.
According to Global Forest Watch, Kenya lost 0.60 per cent of its forest cover between 2001 and 2003, a figure that could be higher due to the underreporting of such incidents around the country.
President William Ruto seeks to plant more than 15 billion trees by the year 2032 to salvage the dwindling forest cover in the country.
According to the Google Greening map, Kenya is slowly slipping into a desert following its reduction of forest cover from 30 per cent to the current 8.5 per cent, far below the recommended UN average of 10 per cent.
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation indicate that 10 million hectares of forest were lost each year to deforestation between 2015 and 2020.
Also, forest insects damage around 35 million hectares of forest annually while fire affected approximately 98 million hectares of forest globally in 2015.
