Forest fire destroys thousands of hectares

Thousands of hectares of forest in the Awash National Park have been destroyed by a fire which started in the park over the weekend, Ethiopian national radio reported on Tuesday. A local agronomist told IRIN he had heard that a fire was raging in the park and had destroyed 6,000 ha of forest, but he did not know whether it had been brought under control. The Awash National Park, about 160 km east of the capital, Addis Ababa, was, said the agronomist, "very vulnerable to man-made problems". He declined to speculate on what he thought the cause of the fire might be, but told IRIN that the park was "completely open, with no office regulating the flow of people in and out". The forest is made up largely of acacia trees, and is understood to have a sizeable population of zebra, oryx and other wildlife species. Ethiopia's forests are increasingly under threat from logging and a growing demand for arable land, leading environmentalists to express grave concern for the future of indigenous forests in Ethiopia. In March last year, more than 70,000 ha of forest in southern Ethiopia were destroyed by fire.