There are countless reasons why some 40,000 trekkers are drawn to Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro each year – the glory of climbing the world’s highest free-standing mountain, the wonder of standing atop Africa’s pinnacle, with the great continent at one’s feet and the reward of seeing Kili’s majestic summit glaciers, some of the very few equatorial glaciers found on Earth. A study published in Science Magazine in 2002, found that these would disappear completely between 2015 and 2020. The good news is that glacier experts and Mount Kilimanjaro National Park ecologists now believe the 11,700-year-old ice is not doomed to extinction in the next five years, or even in the next 15. They warn, however, that the glaciers are still continuing to shrink.
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