Meru, Huangshan sign pact to boost mountain tourism

Mount Kenya National Park and Huangshan Mountain on Monday signed a five-year sister park agreement to enable the former to improve mountain tourism to attract more visitors.

Under the agreement, the two parks will cooperate on scientific exploration, management of natural resources and visitor experience oversight.

The cooperation will help enrich the experience and training of the personnel of both parks through projects of international cooperation.

The relationship allows the parks to benefit by sharing collaboration experiences and approaches including local efforts to work with gateway communities, regional and local economies, groups and partner organizations.

This may be accomplished primarily through the exchange of managerial, technical and professional knowledge as well as information, data, technology, training, and experience.

Speaking during the signing ceremony, Kiraitu Murungi, the governor of Meru county, said the areas of cooperation are sharing park management methods and philosophies; sharing cultural and natural resource management methods and techniques; and electronic communication and technical information exchanges, including programs for science and resource management applications.

This is in addition to environmental education techniques, programs and facilities, including plans and designs for youth education camps and curriculum.

The cooperation also includes recreation and ecotourism management and planning, including private and public partnerships for economic development; as well as the sharing of approaches to developing volunteer and "friends" organizations for park support.

"We promise to strengthen the cooperation between the two parks, and look forward to more Chinese visiting Mount Kenya and more Kenyans visiting Huangshan," he said.

Murungi was particularly stunned by the number of tourists from across the world who flocked to the park. He learned that the city receives 65 million visitors annually.

He was also impressed by the beauty of Huangshan and the developments in it raging from staircases and cable cars to hotels on top of the mountain.

"We are looking forward to establishing a framework of cooperation between the two parks," he said.

Learning from Huangshan, the governor revealed that the sports council of Meru is organizing the first international mountain marathon ever in February next year and extended an invitation to the delegation from Huangshan city.

Wu Wenda, executive director of the Mt. Huangshan Administrative Committee, said Mount Kenya is as magical as Huangshan.

"Huangshan Mountain is one of the famous tourist destinations in China. We will share our experiences on management and conservation to help make Mount Kenya famous across the globe," he said.

Zhou Meifen, cultural counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya, said tourism is very important as it helps people to know each other and share.

"I hope that for the time I'm going to spend in Kenya I will do my best to attract more Chinese tourists to the country," Zhou said.

Wei Chao, vice-president and deputy director of Huangshan Tourism Development, said if the climbing time of Mount Kenya is shortened from the current four days to one or two days, it can enhance visitors' experience and reduce the mountaineering difficulty.

He said the development of a national park is a systematic project that covers many aspects such as environmental protection, community development, research, land and policy as well as development models.

"We are willing to share our experiences and provide professional consultation services to develop Mount Kenya National Park," he said

Charity Muthoni, the deputy chief conservation officer of forests at Kenya Forest Service, expressed gratitude to Huangshan for their willingness to work with the local stakeholders to promote eco-tourism in the country.

Muthoni said Kenya has 2.6 million hectares of gazette forest areas out of which only 135,000 hectares are under forest plantations.

"We want to increase our forest cover from the current 7.4 percent to 10 percent and we are putting out all efforts to achieve that. Tourism is one of the ways to retain our forest cover and we are promoting it," he said.

Salome Gachago, business development manager at Kenya Wildlife Service or KWS, said the cooperation falls in KWS's strategic plan to increase the number of visitors to Mount Kenya which receives less than 20,000 visitors annually.

"We are excited to learn that Mount Kenya can improve the tourist experience through learning from Huangshan Tourism Development.