Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 20 hours ago
Rising lakes in Kenya force communities to flee as wildlife encounters increase

The expanding lakes have also increased encounters between people and wildlife. Crocodiles and hippos are now appearing closer to homes and communities as their natural habitats disappear.

READ MORE : http://www.africanews.com/2026/08/06/rising-lakes-in-kenya-force-communities-to-flee-as-wildlife-encounters-increase

Subscribe on our Dailymotion channel and receive all the latest news from the continent.

Africanews is available in English and French.
Website : www.africanews.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/africanews.channel/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/africanews
Transcript
00:00Rising waters in Kenya's Rift Valley are shaping lives around Lake Baringo, pushing
00:06wildlife closer to homes and forcing thousands of residents to abandon their land.
00:12For years, the land has continued to expand, swallowing farms, schools and tourist facilities.
00:19Kenya Wildlife Service officials say the changes became impossible to ignore more than a decade
00:26ago.
00:28We started seeing expansion of, I mean, water coming up and also going down.
00:35And by around 2014, now we realized that something was, I mean, the lake water was changing completely.
00:42So from 2009, 2010, up to date, the water level has never gone down.
00:49Crocodiles and antipodes are now appearing closer to homes and communities as their natural
00:54habitats disappear.
00:56The rising waters has displaced families like Fisherman Alfred, the Kumbes, whose relatives
01:02have already left in search of safer ground.
01:08My sisters have moved away.
01:10My older brother has moved.
01:12So now there's only three of us left here.
01:15We're coming together so we can help each other move out one by one because we don't
01:20have a new plot.
01:21This was the only plot we had.
01:26Scientists warned the nearby lake Bunguria and Lake Baringo are moving closer together,
01:33raising fears of an environmental crisis if their waters eventually merge.
01:37So if the two lakes will meet, then maybe we'll have an ecological disaster that we may not
01:46know what to do with it.
01:50With climate-linked extreme rainfall driving the changes, communities around the lakes face
01:56an uncertain future as they raise to adapt a landscape being transformed by water.
Comments

Recommended