Chemical plant threatens Rift Valley flamingos

One of the world's great wildlife spectacles, the colossal gathering of flamingos in east Africa, is directly threatened by industrial development, conservationists have warned.

Lake Natron in Tanzania, home to half a million bright-pink lesser flamingos, faces the prospect of a huge soda ash plant being built on its hitherto-unspoilt shores, which is likely to destroy the birds' breeding habitat for good.

The development is being pushed by Lake Natron Resources Limited, part of the Indian company Tata Chemicals. The company wishes to pump salty water from the lake for the production and export of sodium carbonate or washing soda, to build a coal-fired power station and to house more than 1,000 construction staff on site.

Conservationists fiercely attacked the plans yesterday. "Putting Lake Natron at risk is bonkers. It is a pristine site, like no other in the world," said Chris Magin, international officer for Africa for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

"The chances of lesser flamingos continuing to breed at Lake Natron in the face of such mayhem are next to zero. This development will leave lesser flamingos in east Africa facing extinction and should be stopped in its tracks and sunk in water so deep it can never be revived."

Lake Natron hosts more than 500,000 lesser flamingos in summer - 75 per cent of the world's breeding population - and has been the birds' only nesting site in east Africa for 45 years. It is listed by the international Ramsar Wetland Convention and designated an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. Although it stands between four and five feet high, the lesser flamingo, Phoeniconaias minor, is the smallest of the six flamingo species. It has long pink legs and a long neck, and its large body is rose-pink, the colour coming from pigments in its food, the bacteria Spirulina, which it eats by holding its bill upside down in the water. Spirulina, which grows only in salty lakes, sometimes gives Lake Natron itself a pink or red colour.

Lake Natron, which is in the Great Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, and is known as a soda lake because of its high concentration of sodium carbonate, is one of only five breeding sites for lesser flamingos in the world, but if it is damaged, there is no evidence that the birds will breed successfully elsewhere.

Flamingos live until they are about 40 years old but only breed every five or six years. Non-breeding birds do not return to breeding sites until they are ready to breed again.

Dr Magin said: "This could be the beginning of the end for the lesser flamingo. Millions of people have enjoyed the spectacle of flocks of flamingos in Tanzania and Kenya and all of that is now in jeopardy."

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