Kenya's conservation efforts are in trouble after the country's tourism industry has suffered due to an election scandal and the resulting violence.

Tourism is the leading foreign exchange earner in Kenya- it took in almost $1 billion last year alone - and attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists on an annual basis. However the December election melee involving President Mwai Kibaki's re-election prompted ethnic riots which resulted in over 1,000 casulties. Chartered flights originally booked by European tour companies were cancelled  and is responsible for a decrease in funding for conservations projects.

"If we can't regenerate tourism then many of these environmental investments ... will either be severely reduced or collapse," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), which is headquartered in Nairobi. "Revenues to parks and reserves have plummeted putting at risk countless conservation initiatives carried out by the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) and others," he told reporters.

» Reuters Environment