In East African wildlife news, the Big Five and Great Migration usually get most of the press coverage. Recently, though, East Africa’s lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor) have been in the news, too.
Satellite data has revealed that East Africa’s lesser flamingo population is in decline and facing increasing threats to its food sources and breeding habitats.
Over two decades, satellites have gathered Earth observation data across Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. A group of scientists publishing in Current Biology have recently shared that rising water levels in East African lesser flamingo feeding lakes are reducing the birds’ main food source.
The authors warn the birds are likely to be pushed into new unprotected areas in the search for food, especially given increasing levels of rainfall linked to climate change.
As a result, the scientists are calling for coordinated conservation action across international borders, improved monitoring and more sustainable management of land surrounding important flamingo lakes.
East Africa’s Iconic Lesser Flamingo
The lesser flamingo is the smallest and brightest species of flamingo, though it is still a tall and large bird by most standards. The species can weigh from 2.6 to 6 pounds with a standing height of up to 3 feet. Their total length from beak to tail and wingspan are in the same range of measurements, from 2.5 to 3.5 feet. Most of their plumage is pinkish-white.
The female lays a single egg but both parents incubate it for between 22–26 days. The chicks can fly after 40–50 days and the parents live together as a family group for 3 years before they become sexually mature at 5-6 years old. They posses a hallux or hind toe that some other flamingos do not have.
Greater flamingos, which use breeding sites all around the Mediterranean basin, are larger, but the clearest difference between the two species is the much more extensive black on the lesser flamingo’s bill. Size is less helpful in distinguishing the two unless they occur together since the sexes of each species also differ in height.
More than three-quarters of the global population of lesser flamingos live primarily in East Africa. When conditions are right, some of the lakes in East Africa’s Great Rift Valley turn pink. Millions of lesser flamingos—known for their light pink plumage and long necks—gather in saline and semi-saline lakes such as Bogoria and Naivasha in Kenya and Natron in Tanzania. They arrive with two main items on their agenda:
- consume blue-green algae and
- breed
The Great Rift’s Flamingo Soda Lakes
Sometimes known as the Flamingo Lakes, flamingos concentrate in and around a chain of lakes found on the floor of the eastern arm of the Great Rift Valley of Africa—across Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
The Eastern Rift Valley has three types of lakes:
- freshwater lakes
- moderately saline lakes and
- hyper-saline or soda lakes.
Freshwater lake
The Flamingo Lakes fall in the third category and are the major feeding and nesting grounds of flamingos. These lakes are all hyper-saline and highly alkaline, hence the name soda lakes.
The Flamingo Lakes are distinctively different from the other two types of Rift Valley lakes in that they have:
- a very high pH above 9.6,
- hyper-salinity with electrical conductivity ranging from 6,000-160,000 µS/cm, and
- High alkalinity is caused by sodium carbonate salt called trone.
Saline lake
The Flamingo Lakes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania include Lakes Bogoria, Nakuru, Magadi and Elmenteita in Kenya; Manyara, Natron and Eyasi in Tanzania; Abijata, Shalla and Chitu in Ethiopia.
The biodiversity value of the Flamingo Lakes can be viewed as:
- a continuous resource system of lakes, wetlands, and savanna vegetation that is shared by riparian countries
- part of a migratory pathway for waterbirds such as the Palearctic flyers and
- a framework for addressing shared natural resource management problems.
Soda Lake
Soda lakes are terribly toxic to humans but super tasty to flamingos. The lakes host immense blooms of microscopic blue-green algae or cyanobacteria. These plants produce chemicals that fatally damage cells, the nervous system, and the liver in most animals. Lesser flamingos, however, can consume enormous amounts of the algae with no ill effects—and it contains carotenoid pigments that give them their pink color.
Two of the lesser flamingo’s preferred habitats, Lake Bogoria in Kenya and Lake Natron in Tanzania are hypersaline and hostile to practically all other forms of life—Lake Natron’s water can even strip human skin!
Aerial view of red algae and salt formations in the shallow waters of Lake Natron in Tanzania
How do Flamingos Eat that Stuff?!
Tough skin and scales on flamingo’s legs prevent burns, and they can drink water at near boiling point to collect fresh water from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no fresh water is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.
With few other animals able to cope in such conditions, there is minimal competition for food, and these otherwise toxic wetlands are home to massive flocks—known fabulously as flamboyances—of flamingos.
Lake Bogoria, Kenya
Lesser flamingos feed by turning their heads upside down, pumping water through fine hair-like structures called lamellae in their beaks and catching only cyanobacteria of a certain size. Interestingly, lesser flamingos reportedly do not have a sense of taste or a sense of smell.
Their highly specialized feeding tactic means the birds are heavily dependent on certain cyanobacteria species such as spirulina—the same vitamin-rich spirulina you might drink in a smoothie or take in a supplement. In nature, the species that flamingos feed on only grows in highly salty and alkaline conditions, and in soda lakes, it grows in such numbers that these lakes are some of the most productive ecosystems on the planet.
Most of East Africa’s soda lakes are especially sensitive because they often have no outflowing rivers; as their waters rise, they are diluted, reducing their salinity and alkalinity and limiting the growth of the cyanobacteria the flamingos depend on.
Dramatic Rise in the Great Rift’s Soda Lakes
Soda lakes are some of the most productive aquatic ecosystems we have. Their alkaline-saline waters sustain unique phytoplankton communities and provide vital habitats for highly specialized biodiversity including invertebrates, endemic fish species, and Lesser Flamingos.
Flock of flamingos, Lake Natron, Rift Valley, Tanzania
Previous research posited that declines could be attributed to their highly specialized diet of cyanobacteria and dependence on a network of soda lake feeding habitats that are highly sensitive to climate fluctuations and catchment degradation. Changing habitat availability had not been assessed due to a lack of in situ water quality and hydrology data and the irregular monitoring of these water bodies.
In the largest-ever satellite study of its kind, the research published in Current Biology found that lesser flamingo distributions are best explained by phytoplankton biomass, an indicator of food availability.
To assess the threats facing lesser flamingos, the researchers used satellites to monitor 22 key feeding lakes across Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania between 1999 and 2022. It was the first time the whole East Africa range of lesser flamingos had been monitored at this scale. By combining satellite Earth observations and lesser flamingo abundance observations, the research quantified spatial and temporal trends in productivity and ecosystem health over multiple decades at 22 soda lakes across East Africa.
Aerial shot of lesser flamingos flying over a soda lake in the Rift Valley, Tanzania.
Analyses revealed significant declines in phytoplankton biomass from 1999 to 2022, most likely driven by substantial rises in water levels. Declining productivity has reduced the availability of healthy soda lake ecosystems, most notably in equatorial Kenya and northern Tanzania. The results highlight the increasing vulnerability of lesser flamingos and other soda lake biodiversity in East Africa, particularly with increased rainfall predicted under climate change.
Water levels have risen the most in recent years in Kenya and Tanzania, particularly at historically important flamingo lakes Bogoria and Nakuru, which supported more than 1 million birds in the recent past.
Lake Nakuru almost doubled in size between 2009 and 2022, while its mean concentration of chlorophyll a—a photosynthetic pigment measured by satellites that can be used as an estimate of cyanobacteria presence—halved. The number of birds has noticeably declined in response to the losses in their food source.
Lake Natron in Tanzania is also worth highlighting as it is the only regular breeding site for lesser flamingos in East Africa. The rising water levels and declining food sources at Natron, therefore, threaten not only current populations but also the birds’ ability to breed in the region, possibly leading to drastic declines in the future.
Without improved lake monitoring and catchment management practices, soda lake ecosystems could be pushed beyond their environmental tolerances.
Aerial photo of flamingos at Lake Natron, Tanzania
Ngorongoro Crater: Frontline for Flamingos
The soda lakes of East Africa play host to a permanent population of at least 1.5–2.5 million lesser flamingos—with the majority of these located in northern Tanzania.
Flamingos can usually be seen in groups of hundreds or thousands in and around the heavily alkaline Lake Natron, Nakuru, Bogoria and Elmenteita, but seeing flamingos in the Ngorongoro Crater is a special experience.
Wildebeest and flamingos with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the distance
Around 25,000 animals live there; on Nat Hab’s Tanzania’s Great Migration & Ngorongoro Crater, Pride of East Africa: Kenya & Tanzania and Ultimate East Africa Safari, you may encounter elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, eland, gazelle, as well as predators like lion, leopard, cheetah and hyena. Birdlife, including Rift Valley lakes birdlife, is awe-inspiring here, with massive flocks of lesser flamingos.
Most of the mammals found in the Ngorongoro Crater are year-round residents and do not join the migrations that their cousins enjoy. The story is different with the birds of the region—the large flocks or flamboyances of lesser flamingos that can be found in the crater travel between Lake Magadi, Lake Natron, Lake Eyasi and Lake Ndutu.
Large land birds like ostrich and kory bustards, one of the largest flying birds in Africa, roam the grassy plains inside the crater. Look for them following herds of zebras through open savannahs in search of prey that has been disturbed by hooves.
The Ngorongoro Crater is the largest unbroken caldera on Earth. It is the center of a huge ancient volcano that scientists believe may have been larger than Mount Kilimanjaro.
Because of the crater’s permanent supply of fresh water, it sustains the densest concentration of wildlife in Africa. If East Africa wildlife photography is your goal, this may be the African safari for you.
Are you ready for a Great Rift safari? Opinions on the best time to see flamingos in East Africa vary. Some experts say it’s best to visit at the end of the wet season, just before the dry season shrinks East Africa’s lakes.
Conservation Travel: Safeguarding East Africa’s Flamingos
Several conservation initiatives aim to protect Kenya and Tanzania’s lesser flamingo habitats and their food sources, particularly in response to the challenges posed by climate change and rising lake levels.
In the Lake Naivasha Basin, WWF-Kenya is using an integrated approach to tackle water challenges and further conserve the lake. A WWF conservation initiative in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—which aims to protect forests and wildlife habitats, conserve freshwater, and promote climate-smart agriculture—will likewise help protect Lake Natron.
Knowledge of the biodiversity of East Africa’s alkaline soda lakes is lacking. Regular ecological monitoring is required. Management-driven basic scientific research is needed to impact the conservation of biodiversity values in the Flamingo Lakes. This research should inform decisions about the management, conservation and wise use of the Flamingo Lakes.
The most recent research highlights the increasing vulnerability of lesser flamingos and other soda lake biodiversity in East Africa, particularly with increased rainfall predicted as a result of climate change. Without improved lake monitoring and catchment management practices, soda lake ecosystems could be pushed beyond their environmental tolerances.
Next steps to protect the food sources and habitat of lesser flamingos include:
- Habitat Restoration and Management: Efforts to restore and manage flamingo habitats, ensuring that the water quality and level are conducive to the growth of cyanobacteria, which are crucial for flamingo diets
- Water Flow Maintenance: Maintaining water flow in flamingo habitats, as flowing water contains more oxygen and supports underwater life, including the food sources for flamingos
- Climate Change Adaptation Strategies: Initiatives to help flamingo populations adapt to the effects of climate change, which affect their access to food sources and breeding habitat
- Community Engagement and Education: Engaging local communities in flamingo conservation, educating them about the importance of alkaline lakes to the ecosystem, and promoting sustainable practices that preserve flamingo habitats
- Research and Monitoring: Ongoing research and monitoring of flamingo populations and their habitats to better understand the impact of environmental changes and to inform conservation strategies
- International Collaboration: Collaboration between countries and international conservation organizations to protect migratory routes and ensure the safety of flamingos across different regions
These initiatives are crucial to support lesser flamingos by addressing the direct threats to their habitats and food sources, and by mitigating the broader impacts of climate change and human activities.
If you are interested in seeing East Africa’s soda lakes and lesser flamingos for yourself? Nine months out of the year, Nat Hab’s Pride of East Africa: Kenya & Tanzania safari itineraries follow migrations through both Kenya and Tanzania, including various locations in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater.
If you’d like to take your kids or grandkids on a Tanzania or Kenya safari, including lesser flamingos, Nat Hab offers custom private family safaris year-round (with special pricing and activities available for kids) to both Kenya and Tanzania.
