The Great Rift Valley was developed at a time when volcanic activity was common than now. Lake natron derived its name after a mineral known as ‘ Natron.’ It is an amalgamation of the chemicals comprising Hydrate Sodium Carbonate & Sodium Bicarbonate. It is sited in the Gregory Rift the lake is in the Lake Natron basin situated in Ramsar site lowland of international importance. Lake Natron is located in the Arusha district in Tanzania. Where is Lake Natron? Which River Drains into Lake Natron?
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7 How to get to Lake Natron from Arusha? How to reach Lake Natron?. 1 Where is Lake Natron? Which River Drains into Lake Natron?. In the meantime, BirdLife International, Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism and other stakeholders came up with a joint work group for the conservation of Lake Natron to improve tourism. Ramsar sent out a team which came up with several recommendations – one of them being to prepare an integrated management plan for Natron. As a result, the government is obligated to the wise-use of the resource. Lake Natron is a Ramsar site – a network of wetlands of international important underpinned by an international agreement by that name. “As a result of our campaigns, Ramsar Convention got to hear about it,” says Mwathe. “The brine in Natron is what Lesser flamingos exist on – for everything from building nests to feeding off it. It is our pink ambassador,” says Mwathe fondly. “You find the Lesser flamingo migrating to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi. Tourists flock to the lakes of the Rift Valley to see these pretty birds and tourism is the fastest growing sector globally. If you destroy Natron, the entire species will be wiped out,” said Mwathe. “The thing about Lake Natron is that it is the only breeding site of the Lesser flamingo this side of the globe, with over 75 per cent of the global population breeding here. The two alkaline lakes lie close to each other with only the international boundary between them. “We’ve seen the results of Magadi Soda (the factory across the plain in Kenya) in Magadi in the past 100 years.” “If the Tata plant was put up at Lake Natron, it will would damaged the ecosystem,” says Mwathe. The factory was expected to mine sodium carbonate for the manufacture of washing powder for export. The extreme temperatures and alkaline waters that have kept away both humans and wildlife is the private bliss that Lesser flamingos need to breed.īut this could all change if a proposed soda ash factory gets built. Minerals like sodium carbonate from the surrounding volcanoes and hills that sorrround Lake Natron give it its strong alkalinity. There’s not a single village on its shores. Lying on the Rift Valley floor surrounded by the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, this shallow alkaline pan offers no relief to the sparse wildlife, cattle or the Maasai community living nearby. Maybe it is because in contrast, the road that leads from Mto wa Mbu to the more famous parks of Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara is tarmacked and smooth all the way thus getting all the traffic. Lake Natron is not on the regular tourist’s itinerary despite being a three-hour rough drive on a murram road from the town of Mto wa Mbu (river of mosquitoes). The fate of the pink bird therefore still hangs in the balance. Tata backed out in 2011 but the government through the Tanzania Development Corporation (NDC) has nevertheless issued tenders for the construction of a soda ash factory. The group was formed in 2007 protest the Tanzanian government’s decision to allow Tata Chemicals Ltd of Indian to put up a soda-ash mining factory on the shores of Lake Natron, which would have destroyed the flamingo habitat. “It can become extinct within our lifetime,” says Ken Mwathe of BirdLife International, who is also the co-ordinator of the Lake Natron Consultative Group. Ironically, although the Lesser flamingo is the smallest and the most numerous of the five flamingo species, it is now also the most threatened. 
Every year, two million of the crimson-winged birds come to breed on the shores of these alkine waters.Īfter the eggs hatch, the lake turns into a nursery of chicks and a few months later, the pink beauties take to their wings to neighbouring Kenya, to the other lakes of the Great Rift Valley to feed on an exclusive diet of spirulina algae found in the fresh water lakes of Baringo and Naivasha – until they are ready to breed again. Tanzania’s Lake Natron is world famous for being the home of Lesser Flamingos.
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