Blooming Controversy: What Is Killing the Wildlife in Kenya’s Lake Naivasha?

Drought, flower farms, and pesticides are damaging the already shallow lake

NAIROBI, KENYA—-Flamingos are showing up on Lake Naisvasha, a freshwater vacation destination 100 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, and they worry David Kilo. Why? Because flamingos favor saltwater. When flamingos flock to freshwater lakes it’s an unmistakable signal that the natural balances of a healthy ecosystem have sustained a heavy blow.

“They shouldn’t be here,” Kilo told Circle of Blue in March following the United Nations’ World Water Day Conference in Kenya. “They usually gather at Nakuru, [a saltwater body], but recently they’ve started to come to Naivasha.”

“The algae, just like the flamingos, shouldn’t be there.”No one knows precisely what the threat is to Lake Naivasha, Kenya’s third largest lake. But it’s genuine, says Kilo, the chairman of an anti-poaching conservation group. Droughts prompted by the changing climate, soaring population in cities fed by the lake, and a nearly 40-year-old horticultural industry that uses the lake for irrigation and drainage have shrunk Lake Naivasha to roughly 10,700 hectares (41 sq. mi.) or half its size two decades ago.

In February, a month before a Circe of Blue reporter visited the lake, three days of heavy rains ended with more than 1000 dead fish. The lake’s water turned red. The government blamed the fish kill on low oxygen levels.

The ecosystem damage in this part of east Africa is another facet of a wave of unmistakable evidence in Africa and every other continent that climate change, population growth, and the pursuit of industrial wealth is starting to buckle the Earth’s basic biology. The principle resource most affected is available supplies of clean freshwater.

Lake Naivasha was a site visited by several journalists following the major UN conference for World Water Day in Nairobi. The lake, which is listed as protected by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, was once an incredible tourist attraction. Development around the lake has resulted in deforestation and now wildlife is disappearing. In the meantime, two of the rivers that flow into the lake, Malewa and Gilgil, are drying up and a thick algal soup develops among the papyrus groves on the lake’s margin. The algae, just like the flamingos, shouldn’t be there.

Low Oxygen, Water Levels Harm Wildlife

Kilo’s office and pier connects to a plot of land along Naivasha known as Fisherman’s Camp, a lovely green spot shaded by scores of acacia trees. The camp has a lodge with rooms to rent and space to pitch a tent on the grass. Camp managers were preparing for the weekend’s Rift Valley Festival, a three-day “musical experience in the cradle of mankind,” according to promotional flyers.

Field manager Moses Parmat said that changes in Lake Naivasha’s wildlife and water quality have affected the camp’s ability to draw international tourists. “Ninety percent of what attracts tourism has gone down,” Parmat said. Domestic visitors still come to Naivasha as a refuge from Nairobi’s congestion, but they do not bring the camp as much income as those from abroad.

Lake Naivasha’s water levels have fallen drastically in recent years, shrinking the breeding ground for microphytes—tiny organisms at the base of the food chain. The lake, which has an average depth of 5 meters, reached an all-time recorded low in December 2009. They usually cover the lake bottom, Kilo said, but an increase in the amount of sediment has reduced the population.

Kilo points from the pier 300 meters inland to show the water’s recession. The most affected area is the shallower eastern shore where the water retreated three kilometers. Now in many parts of the lake the first growth of papyrus is too far away for the birds and marine life that breed there.

The fluctuating lake levels have devastated hippopotamus pods. In addition to a shrinking lake, much of the hippos’ habitat is being converted to farmland. As a result hippos have become trapped in mud pits around the lake, stranded from a water source and left to die.

“The riparian lands have been taken for farming, so the hippos are not coming,” Parmat said. “We have seen many die. They go to trenches where people get water and die. The Kenyan Wildlife Service traps and moves them elsewhere, but it is still a big problem.”

While the disappearance of birds and hippos from the lake has been gradual, it was the death of 1000 fish three months ago that revealed just how bad lake conditions have become. The kill aggravated the debate between government officials and local activists who are trying to determine what caused oxygen levels to drop, and so many fish to die.

The Battle with Flower Farms

Coming from Naivasha town, a right turn on Moi South Lake Road takes you along the southern shore of the lake. On the left, volcanic Mt. Longonot rises over dusted plains, cacti and acacia trees. On the right, lakeshore topography gradually gives way to a line of three-meter, hedge-fronted fences that partially obscure translucent greenhouses. Every kilometer or so there is a break in the hedge with space for a gated guardhouse and a company sign: Nini Farm, Oserian Flower Company, Kenya Roses, Sher Agencies. Looking through the gates it is possible to see the depth of the compounds. The greenhouses extend hundreds of meters in the distance like perspective lines seeking a vanishing point.

Kenya is the top flower supplier to the European Union. Flower farming is lucrative business, ranking second as a source of foreign exchange behind tourism. The industry earned US$585 million in 2008, according to the Kenya Flower Council, a trade group.

The flower farms provide cut flowers for export, of which 97 percent end up in bouquets in European cities. The farms began locating around Lake Naivasha in the early 1970s, drawn there by the water supply, the high equatorial sun which ensures straight stems, favorable weather conditions for year-round growing and direct air links with Europe. Roses and carnations, which comprise the bulk of the Naivasha operations, can go from Kenyan farm to London florist in 48 hours.

Cont.
Photo © Brett Walton