As isolated as the lake is (it wasn't even discovered by Europeans until 1954), there are no protections in place for the lake or its threatened flamingo population.įollow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+. The serenity of Lake Natron - and its flamingo population - are threatened by a proposed hydroelectric power plant on the Ewaso Ngiro River, the main river feeding the lake.

As shallow lakes in a hot climate, their water temperatures can reach as high as 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). Both are terminal lakes that do not drain out to any river or sea they are fed by hot springs and small rivers. Lake Natron is one of two alkaline lakes in that area of East Africa the other is Lake Bahi. The flamingos' nests are built on small islands that form in the lake during the dry season. Other volcanoes usually spew silicates, but the Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only one on the planet that spills 'natrocarbonatites' as cool, runny, dark washes.During breeding season, more than 2 million lesser flamingos ( Phoenicopterus minor) use the shallow lake as their primary breeding ground in Africa. It's a favorite among petrologists because it's the only one of its kind, Hannes Mattsson, a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, told NBC News.

The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron.

Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery A calcified dove, from Nick Brandt's book Across The Ravaged Land, published by Abrams, New York. South of the Kenyan border, this salt lake in the northern region of Tanzania and is. How did the lake get this hostile? The 'salt' in it isn't the regular table variety harvested from seawater, but magmatic limestone that's been forged deep in the Earth, poured out in runny lava flows and blasted into the air to become ash clouds 10 miles high. Situated in the eastern area of the Great Rift Valley lies Lake Natron. Water levels fluctuate easily because it's so hot - when the levels drop, the corpses are left behind on the shores, coated in salt, exactly how Brandt found them. Small birds or bats that try and fail to cross the 12- by 30-mile lake fall in, as do insects like beetles and locusts.

Flamingos are some of the lucky birds that can make the trip across the lake which is 30-miles wide at its longest point. 'If a body falls anywhere else it decomposes very quickly, but on the edge of the lake, it just gets encrusted in salt and stays forever,' David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester who has visited Lake Natron four times, told NBC News.

Salt lake natron fish