Lesser flamingos lose one of their only four African breeding sites to sewage

By Tim Cocks

Until the last half-decade, the majestic lesser flamingo had four African breeding sites: two salt pans in Botswana and Namibia, a soda lake in Tanzania, and an artificial dam outside South Africa’s historic diamond-mining town of Kimberley.

Now it only has three.

Years of raw sewage spilling into Kamfers Dam, the only South African water body where lesser flamingos congregated in large enough numbers to breed, have