Kenya’s Famous Flamingo Preserve is Drying Up Again

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The home of the world’s largest concentration of flamingos, Lake Nakuru National Park in central Kenya, is drying up for the second time in two decades.

The shallow lake in the Rift Valley, one of the world’s most visited parks and also a home for 55 mammal species, shrank considerably in the early 1990s due to drought but shortly returned to normal levels. It could now disappear altogether in another eight years if the destruction of the nearby Mau forest were not contained, experts warned.

Historically, three rivers – the Njoro, Nederite and Makalia -- collected water from the forest and fed into the lake. But now deforestation is robbing the rivers of their water. Both the Njoro and Nederite had shrunk significantly by 2008. The Makalia dried up in February this year, according to a park guard, John Kariuki.

The lake was always shallow. At its largest, it once covered 40 square kilometers. Now it is just 25 square kilometers. The Baharini springs, on the lake’s northern shore, are one of the few remaining sources of water flowing into the lake, but the springs are also believed to be drying up, said Kariuki.

Animals in the park, such as lions, elephants, gazelles and rhinos, are endangered by the drought and ensuing loss of vegetation. The animals in the park may die due to lack of food and water if no immediate action is taken, he added.

Michael Anyanje, the head of eco-system for the Kenya Wildlife Service, said in a telephone interview that the only option to save the animals would be to relocate some of them. “Lake Nakuru is not the only one affected by the Mau forest complex destruction; other lakes include Bogoria, Baringo, Turkana and Natron in Tanzania,” Anyanje added.

Julius Kipng’etich, the service director, said in an interview that the encroachment of human settlement on the Mau forest worsened when 67,000 acres in its eastern section were excised from the preserve in January 2008. That land was cleared after the post-election violence that had left thousands displaced. The rivers there began drying up as a result of the development there.

As of this year, the Njoro River’s water volume had gone down by more than 75 percent, while a fourth river, the Mara, had shrunk by 8 percent.

Kipng’etich pointed out that the rivers brought algae to the lake. The loss of the sources of algae could mean the world-famous flock of flamingos there could no longer survive or would leave.

The director said the impact on the national park would drive down the tourism industry, which brings more than 2 million Kenyan shillings a day (about $26,000 U.S.) to the local economy. “If we lose the park, we will have shown the world that we are irresponsible and careless as a country,” he said.

An estimated 25,000 people have settled either legally or illegally in the eastern and western flanks of the forest preserve, according to Anyanje. The government has said it plans to resettle them elsewhere and fence off the Mau preserve to better protect it. The Mau is one of five water recharge systems in the country.