Dr. Brooks Childress fitting one of the transmitters with the assistance of Wim Van den Bossche (partially hidden) being watched by Earthwatch volunteer Jennie Rollings.
Picture taken by Valerie Madison-Mendoza
A recent die-off of lesser flamingos at Lake Bogoria, Kenya, one of the sites of the Earthwatch-supported Lakes of the Rift Valley project, raised international alarm about the population status of this species of conservation concern. Now a state-of-the-art satellite-tracking program stands to give vital clues to the movements of lesser flamingos among feeding and breeding lakes in East Africa.
The National Museums of Kenya, University of Leicester, BirdLife Belgium, and the Max-Planck Research Center for Ornithology, launched this exciting new satellite-tracking program with the assistance of Earthwatch teams at Lake Bogoria. In October, team members helped Dr. Brooks Childress (National Museums of Kenya and the University of Leicester) and Wim Van den Bossche (BirdLife Belgium) attach satellite transmitters to four large male lesser flamingos captured at the lake.
"The movement of the lesser flamingos from lake to lake in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa is not well-known or understood," said Childress, a principal investigator of Lakes of the Rift Valley. "By using satellite tracking for the first time, we will be able to follow representative birds as they move around the lakes, and begin to understand their strange nomadic movements for the first time."
The lesser flamingo is categorized as "near-threatened" by BirdLife International due to its irregular breeding and dependence on a limited number of breeding sites (only Lake Natron in East Africa). The purposes of this program are to provide further support for the development of an international flyway protection plan for flamingos in Africa. Monitoring the north-south movements of flamingos along the Rift Valley may reveal possible links between populations in eastern and southern Africa.
Two of the four transmitters, donated by the Max-Planck Research Center for Ornithology, were solar powered and were set to transmit continuously. The other two, funded by The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust were battery powered and set to transmit eight hours every three days. An additional purpose of the program is to provide comparisons between the two transmitter types.
Even within the first few weeks, researchers have learned much about lesser flamingos' interlake movements. One tagged bird flew from Lake Bogoria to Lake Nakuru, to Lake Elmenteita, and back Bogoria in a matter of days, while another flew to Lake Natron, the primary breeding lake for lesser flamingos in East Africa. All flights between lakes have been at night.
The International Flamingo Foundation (USA) and the Peter Scott Trust for Education and Research in Conservation have also provided important financial support for this new program, which required significant funding. Each transmitter is worth $3,000, plus $5,000 per year for satellite location data.
"While radio tracking is fairly common and is able to track animals over short distances, less than a mile, satellite tracking is much more sophisticated, and expensive," said Childress. "It is capable of tracking an animal all over the world, no matter where it travels. Because two of the transmitters are solar-powered, they should last 'forever,' enabling us to follow the birds for several years."
The satellite-tracking program may lead to vital clues to the population status and movements of lesser flamingos in East Africa, making conservation efforts more effective. Earthwatch teams on Lakes of the Rift Valley will continue working at Lake Bogoria to collect data on flamingos and their role in lake ecology.
For information on volunteering on the Lakes of the Rift Valley, click here.
Earthwatch Institute is an international nonprofit organization which supports scientific field research worldwide by offering members of the public unique opportunities to work alongside leading field scientists and researchers. The Institute's mission is to engage people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment.