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African Lake's Iconic Birds are Vanishing

 

November 16, 2006 — By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press

LAKE NAKURU NATIONAL PARK, Kenya — The famous flamingos of Nakuru are fading

away.

 

The spindly, exquisite birds, clouds of pink rising on a million wings in

generations of tourist photographs, are dying, flying off, fleeing a seemingly

fatal brew of environmental threats in a shrinking Lake Nakuru, the home that

has sheltered them for uncounted centuries.

 

Where just six years ago as many as 1 million flamingos fed in Nakuru's

shallows, in vast rosy carpets of plumage, hooked beaks and curved necks, as few

as 30,000 stay-behinds hug the equatorial lake's receding shoreline. The

carcasses of many hundreds of dead flamingos litter newly dried and caked

sections of lakebed.

 

Nakuru, whose recent maximum size was about 50 square kilometers (18 square

miles), may have lost half its water in the past few years, residents say.

 

" Something must be done, " said Jackson Kilonzo, manager of the Lake Nakuru

Lodge. " People have to come together and decide to do whatever it takes to bring

the water level back up. "

 

Precisely why the shallow lake and its flamingo population are shrinking remains

a complex question.

 

The water catchment area around Nakuru has been heavily deforested, and its

rivers are running dry. Years of drought have further reduced the water supply.

African temperatures, like global temperatures, are rising. Sewer and industrial

runoff from nearby Nakuru town pollute the lake. And its blue-green algae, the

flamingos' food, has diminished with the lake.

 

The U.N. Environment Program will soon undertake a comprehensive Lake Nakuru

study, said the Nairobi-based agency's Nehemiah Rodich, a former director of the

Kenya Wildlife Service.

 

" It won't be easy to pin down a complexity of issues that ultimately might be

the causes, " he said.

 

The flamingo, to many, symbolizes Africa as much as the lion or rhino.

 

Ancient Egyptians revered the impossibly graceful bird. In her classic 1938

memoir, " Out of Africa, " Karen Blixen told of a vast flamingo flock alarmed by

duck hunters: " At the first shot they rise in a cloud, like dust from a beaten

carpet; they are the color of pink alabaster. "

 

Such sights have drawn 200,000 visitors a year to Lake Nakuru, long home to what

was believed to be the bulk of the global population of lesser flamingos, one of

two species, with greater flamingos, inhabiting Nakuru, in the Rift Valley 160

kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Nairobi.

 

Paul Opiyo, deputy warden of the Lake Nakuru National Park, questioned a recent

report in The Nation newspaper of Nairobi that the flamingo population had

dropped to 30,000.

 

" There's slightly more than that, " he said, although he offered no current

official figures. He also said the Nation's estimate that the population had

recently declined by 800,000 was too high.

 

Many birds are known to have relocated to other Rift Valley lakes that, like

Nakuru, are heavily alkaline, waters hospitable to blue-green algae growth. But

those lakes are shrinking, too, and Rodich said mass flamingo deaths have been

reported at nearby Lake Oloidien.

 

" There's a problem with the algae, " said Opiyo. " If the lake is shrinking, there

will be less food for the flamingos. "

 

The park deputy said a smaller Lake Nakuru presents another problem: Toxic urban

runoffs become more concentrated in less water. He said many flamingos have

developed sores on their legs because of the pollutants.

 

" We're working to clean up a sewage treatment plant, " he said.

 

Lake Nakuru -- with a mean depth 2.5 meters (8 feet) -- has shrunk before, even

disappeared. But this time, because of global warming, it may be different.

 

" The lake is threatened by deforestation and other problems, but now with a

climate signature on top of that, " said U.N. Environment Program spokesman Nick

Nuttall. The shallowness of many Rift Valley lakes makes them vulnerable as

temperatures rise and more water evaporates.

 

Ringed by big spreading acacia trees and grasslands where zebra, waterbuck and

rhinoceros browse, Lake Nakuru is slowly pulling back toward its center, leaving

a whitish, salt-encrusted rim several hundred meters (yards) wide at some

points. Die-hard flamingos retreat with the water, their muted honks breaking a

haunting afternoon silence.

 

Where will it end?

 

" The life of the flamingo depends on the water level, and we haven't had

reliable rainfall for years, " said lodge manager Kilonzo. " Tourism is the

lifeline of this area. Without the lake and the flamingos, our lifeline is

threatened. "

 

Source: Associated Press

 

 

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