A lake lies on its deathbed

• Drought and human activity join forces to drain off 85 per cent of Elementaita

Dr Kuloba says there are isolated cases of lesser flamingos breeding in Lake Elementaita, which is also home to between 350 and 400 different bird species. He said the disappearance of the lake might also disrupt the migratory patterns of millions of flamingos that shuttle between the five lakes in the Great Rift Valley.

“Research had not proved the lakes the flamingos go to and at what periods. This makes all the lakes vital to the migratory birds,” he says.

The larger flamingo population of between 1.5 and 2.5 million is in the five saline lakes in East Africa, with smaller numbers in lakes in Ethiopia, West and South Africa, India and Spain.

Dr Kuloba says the numbers of flamingoes in the other countries apart from East Africa are too small to form a spectacle that can attract tourism, as has been the case with Elementaita. He says about 85 per cent the lake has dried up. Only a small percentage of the lake is remaining at the mouth of River Kariandusi.

River Mbaruku, which was the only other source of water for the lake, became seasonal in the 1990s due to environmental degradation of their catchment areas before drying up altogether.

Dr Kuloba says the volume of River Kariandusi, whose source is a hot spring, has not been affected, although it hardly drains into the lake because of abstraction upstream.

“People upstream are abstracting a big volume of water for irrigation and what is getting into the lake is too little to sustain the ecosystem. About 12,000 flamingos remaining in the lake are congested at the mouth of Kariandusi and they cannot be seen from the highway,” he says.

He adds that the warm water from the hot springs was an added advantage to the farmers as it catalyses growth of crops but leads to over-abstraction.

A naturalist at Elementaita Country Lodge on the shores of the lake, Mr Fredrick Muiruri say the number of visitors to the lake has drastically reduced. Conservation groups around the lake are pushing for its gazettement, as part of efforts to save the lake from possible extinction.

KWS senior research scientist Julius Edebbe said Lake Elementaita, which is already a Ramser Site, Lake Nakuru and Lake Bogoria were set to be declared international sites of ecological importance.

Dr Edebbe said the other condition for a resource to be declared a World Heritage Site — and which Elementaita did not have — was a national protection and a management plan.

“It is for these reasons that we have to gazette the lake, review its management plan and implement it,” he said.