Mombasa-Nairobi railway not threatening wildlife

Zebras graze on grass at Kenya's Nairobi National Park in Nairobi, Kenya, March 21, 2015. [Xinhua]

To protect wildlife, the Chinese company reviewed the accidents caused by animals traversing the existing railway from 2007 to 2012, and spotted the places where the new railway will make it convenient for animals to cross.

Guiding facilities will be established to help them traverse safely. Underpasses will also be constructed where animals are believed to migrate. A tall wire fence has been placed alongside the railway to keep animals away.

National Geographic quoted a 2013 World Bank study saying that building an entirely new corridor with wider standard gauge rails would be expensive and unnecessary. Simply refurbishing the existing one could increase cargo capacity to 60 million tons per year.

The Chinese company rebuked this, saying that the old meter-gauge railway's annual cargo capacity would not surpass 4.5 million tons after refurbishing based on existing technologies, which cannot meet the demands of the port of Mombasa. By contrast, the standard gauge Mombasa-Nairobi railway's cargo capacity is designed to reach 25 million tons per year. It also can be upgraded into a double-track and electrified railroad when the time comes.

"The old corridor is how you built a railway 100 years ago. You had slow speeds, a max of 50, 60 kilometers an hour," said Eric Gross, a civil engineer who studied some of the designs for the project on behalf of a Kenyan environmental group. In reality, most freight traveling on the railroad moves far slower than that.

Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta has defended the Mombasa-Nairobi railway as being necessary for the nation's economic development, saying that the new corridor will speed up freight transport and lower costs in the long run.

Robert Obrien, assistant director of the adjoining Tsavo West and Tsavo East National Parks, says the animals are slowly becoming accustomed to the intrusion of infrastructure.