The river is looking really good. The water is ‘black’ which means the water from Usangu is flowing though already. According to Park Authorities the Usangu water started on the 24th January 2010. This is much earlier than usual, ‘normally’ it most often reached Ruaha the end of Feb to early March. The water in the river is usually at its highest mid March so we will wait and see what happens this year.
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Due to early rains the river was flowing well at the beginning of November. The Jongomero River had several good floods which cleaned out the old pools and assisted the GRR to flow well past Msembe HQ and on down to Lunda. This was fantastic news for normally November is when the GRR is completely dry.
However, since the 21st of November the rain has stopped. Despite the rain stopping, the river has improved slightly since October. To date the GRR has not stopped flowing this dry season. Let us hope the rain returns soon. Not only is the river still flowing up at Jongomero, but there is still a trickle of water reaching the Lunda end of the park. We have not had water down to Lunda in October for 14 years. This is an historic year!
Although the flow is not a torrent it is certainly what we have all been working towards. This indicates that preserving the wetland from thousands of cattle, and shifting some of the small scale farmers a marked difference has been achieved. I find this incredibly encouraging. Considering that Ruaha Park received very poor rainfall this year, and that water off-take continues on a massive scale due to irrigation in the catchment area, it proves that it doesn’t take very much to improve the situation. Therefore, with more effort directed to proper management of these precious water reserves, the objective of ensuring that the flow of the GRR reaches the Mtera Dam will be realized. This would be a remarkable achievement for Tanzania. The river is not looking too bad for this time of year, however, as per usual, it has dropped significantly over a short period of time.
I suspect we will see the same trend as last year, in that the river will continue to drop fairly fast until it reaches a shallow trickle and will stop altogether at the beginning of October when the rice growers start planting their seedlings. This year, Ruaha National Park received very poor rainfall, as a result the springs in the sand-rivers, and surrounding areas are mostly dry already. Therefore, the animals will face a big problem later on in the season. In fact, over the past few years due to the drying of the river, game viewing has really deteriorated from the end of September through to December. Previously, when the river was in better shape, these dry months were Ruahas' prime game viewing months. The news is not good. The Ruaha River has dried up, a couple of weeks ago, it has stopped flowing. The reason for this is that the rice growers upstream have started flooding their seedling beds at this time for rice, diverting all the flow away from the Great Ruaha River. All that is left is a couple of pools which are slowly drying up. This part of the website will be used for the latest park news, the situation of the Great Ruaha River etc. If there is also any questions feel free to ask them here, or any improvements that could be made to the website. |
AUTHORRuaha National Park News ARCHIVES
July 2014
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