Surfbirds News: July 2007 Archives
could soon be destroyed by industrial pollution.
Developers want to build a huge soda ash plant on the internationally protected Lake Natron in Tanzania pumping salty water from the lake for the production and export of sodium carbonate or washing soda. They also plan to house more than 1,000 construction staff on site.
Lake Natron hosts more than 500,000 lesser flamingos in summer – 75 per cent of the world’s breeding population - and has been the bird’s only nesting site in East Africa for 45 years.
Lesser Flamingo, copyright Tamás Zalai
It is listed by the international Ramsar Wetland Convention and designated an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. Dr Chris Magin, the RSPB’s International Officer for Africa, said: 'Putting Lake Natron at risk is bonkers. It is a pristine site like no other in the world.
'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.'
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