Lake
Nakuru has undergone several changes for the last few decades one that led to a
full disappearance of the flamingos in early years. This famous lake had a
tendency to dry in this years and was about to be converted into a dust bowl.
This time, swirling columns of chocking soda engulfed the town and its
potential as a nature reserve was not seriously envisaged. In the 1950’s it was
converted into a dustpan but with the coming up of good rains during 1961 and
1962, the lakebed was once again flooded. In1961, the southern lakeshore was
made into a bird sanctuary to protect the lesser flamingos. By that time Lake
Nakuru was already famous throughout the world for these birds.
Today,
Lake Nakuru is hitting headlines of many newspapers and anchoring with a claim
of flamingos flying away in search of food as many writers claim. To some
extent this could be true since the waters in Lake Nakuru are far much too
little for growth of large numbers of blue green algae which is the primary
food for lesser flamingos. This volume is not enough to support vast colonies
sustainably, as many tourists would want. Now we are remaining with
approximately thirty thousand lesser flamingos. In the month of august this
year [2006] the census shown that there were over 1.5 million birds and this
could be evidenced visually as one needed to drive to Baharini springs to view
the birds as tourist are doing now. This leaves one to wonder what has exactly
happened to these birds for such a short period of four months. The ongoing
short rains are a little more hope for the next few months before the next
migration period of birds occurs. It is also making the route to the
hippo-point and baharini springs impassible thus forcing the tourist to use the
eastern and Nderit shoreline as the current viewpoints. However these is not a
new trend and should not be taken as a prove to discourage visitors from
visiting the lake and the entire park as flamingos do migrate for various
reasons and most of them are purely natural.
For many years, flamingos’ migratory behavior
has been predictable, not now. Everything has changed. The big blame is the so-
called global warming. Yes, this has really affected the climate of this
region. Flamingos use instinct to make their next move. This is barely on
everything, from bathing, eating drinking and migrating to mention but a few.
The climatic condition at any particular moment plays a big role on deciding
what is to be done at this particular point. Any change on natural occurrences
such as early coming of rains or even lateness may highly affect their
behavior. Flamingos fly to Lake Natron in Tanzania to breed and then come back
to Lake Nakuru to feed. Lake Nakuru is known to host over 1.5 million lesser
when there are
plenty of blue green algae. Their cousins, the
greater flamingos are herbivores feeding on small fish mosquito larvae and
worms.The rapid climate change has not only affected the flamingos but also the
general ecosystem of Lake Nakuru national park and it is clear that
catastrophic events are likely to lead animals such as the once common bohor
reedbuck into extinction. This is mainly because of falling of survival tactics
and mechanisms as the vegetation take another twist within the park. It is
believed that the shore of the lake where this antelope was easily found was
covered by tall grass making it easy for this animal to hide from its
predators, Now the grass is too short such that animals such as Thomson’s
gazelles and their alike the grant’s gazelles are also straining to feed as
they can be spotted by the predators from quite a far distance.
Buffaloes
on the other hand have taken the position that was once occupied by the defassa
water buck in the early 1980’s.Since buffaloes are mixed feeders. They can feed
on quite a wider variety of foods unlike the water bucks, which feed only on
soft grass. However the competition is high and a scientific intervention will
soon be required so as to maintain the park in its first position as the most
visited park in Kenya besides Masai Mara, which is a reserve.
The
issue of one animal increasing so rapidly in absence of the other is not an
issue that we should stare at. This is a global resource and the fact that it
is in Kenya should not put off any expert from all over the world to come up
with a solution to this. This time it’s even worse for the trees not have been
spared either. Lake Nakuru national park once boosted of having the largest
Euphorbia forest (euphorbia candelabrum) in East and central Africa however
it’s now demise. All the old trees are off and no expert have come up with any
explanation of what has swept away the Euphorbia trees within a span of such a
short period as approximately six months. The question is `is global warming
responsible for this demise that the euphorbia trees are so immune deficient of
the current climatic changes, is it a disease or who is responsible’. A recent
theory by a source not well known to me says that the Black Rhinos are
debarking the tree in search of a certain mineral from the Euphorbia’s
succulent bark exposing the tree to fungal infections. After the tree fall,
sources say that some ants come in and swtart eating the dry part while the
fungi start eating the tree from top. The baboons and the black and white
colobus monkey are said to be responsible of the eating of the premature seeds
thus discontinuing the life cycle. This theory is however questionable as we
don’t have such a large number of Black Rhinos in Nakuru to clear all the
Euphorbia in such a short period.
This
is definitely a clear indication that there are a lot of new threats to the
natural environment as the effect of global warming take its new heights. This
is just a case study of what is happening in the current world. Kenya is part
of the world and its resources such as a major attraction and a world heritage
site such as Lake Nakuru should be used by countries and states such as America
to endorse and sign the Kyoto protocol.
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