| Lake Nakuru National Park at an area of 188 sq km is home to Lake Nakuru, one of the alkaline Rift Valley lakes and a fantastic bird sanctuary, its shores populated at times by more than one million flamingoes. The famous ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson defined it as "the greatest bird spectacle on earth". The fortunate sentence has now become a cliché and is used up to fed-up-ism for promotional purposes.
Sadly, along the past years flamingoes have vanished sporadically to reappear later in a similarly weird way, but flocks are now greatly reduced. On the other hand, encroachment of the environment by the surrounding population has urged the authorities to fence the park perimeter with 74 km of metal wire. The first fence was erected in 1976 and reinforced ten years later with a sun-powered electric fence, thanks to the cooperation of the British Rhino Rescue Trust.
The different measures are directed to protect an exceptionally important area for wildlife conservation, not only bird life diversity which inspired the park creation but also a great lot of mammal species, native or introduced, which live and breed successfully in the park, among the latter are rhinos. The park was declared a sanctuary for the protection of these voluminous and endangered animals in 1987. From then on, re-introduction of specimens of both species, black and white, has made Nakuru become one of the main rhino refuges in Kenya and the place where the visitor can easily find two of the five rhino species surviving in the world.
There is easy access to this park popular for day trips for those with little time to spare in between a business trip in Kenya. As you descend in to the Great Rift Valley a drive of approximately 2.5 hours covering 160 kilometers brings you to Nakuru. |
