There are many titles that Lake Turkana takes: the world’s largest permanent desert lake, the world’s largest alkaline lake, the fourth largest African lake, and the world’s fourth largest salt water lake by volume. But there’s more to this lake than its size, salinity and water volume.
First is its location. The long ribbon-like body of the lake follows the Rift Valley from the southern Ethiopian border into north-western Kenya. It spans 249 kilometres and is an integral part of the identity of the Turkana region. Lake Turkana has previously gone by various names given to it by the communities that live around it and by European explorers as well. In the spirit of decolonization, it was christened its current name in 1975 by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in honour of the Turkana people that call its shores home.
There are three national parks around and within Lake Turkana, with the first being Sibiloi National Park. Located on the eastern shores of the lake, this area was designated as a park in 1973 due to the large number of fossils unearthed in the region. Its status as a national park helped to protect and encourage more paleoanthropological excavation.
Sibiloi National Park is the reason that the Lake Turkana Basin is allotted the description “the cradle of humankind.” Renowned paleoanthropologist, Richard Leakey, chanced upon the region in 1968. This was after bad weather forced his plane to make an emergency landing here on its way to Nairobi from Omo (Ethiopia). Upon noticing the presence of sedimentary rocks, he later returned and led a team in excavating the place. The following year, he discovered the remains of Paranthropus boisei, a species that lived about 2 million years ago and is popularly referred to as “Nutcracker Man”.
More hominid fossils were uncovered after it became a national park, but one of the most astonishing finds was the skeleton of an eight-year-old boy preserved by the desert sands for 1.5 million years. Nariokotome Boy or Turkana Boy, as the fossil is called, was discovered in 1984 by Kenyan paleoanthropologist Kamoya Kimeu. Nariokotome Boy remains the most complete early-human fossil ever discovered.
The other two national parks on the Lake Turkana Basin are South Island National Park and Central Island National Park. These islands were legally designated as national parks in 1983 and 1985 respectively due to their importance as wildlife habitats.
South Island is a bird watcher’s dream; it is an important flyway passage and stopover for 34 species of palearctic migrant birds. Central Island has a unique geographical landscape. It is made up of three active volcanoes and three crater lakes: Crocodile Lake, Flamingo Lake and Tilapia Lake. Together, these two islands make up the world’s largest colony and breeding grounds for Nile crocodiles in the world.
In 1997, Lake Turkana National Parks were believed to have contributed more to the understanding of human ancestry and paleo-environment than any other site in the world. They were collectively inscribed on the World Heritage List this same year.
The preservation of this site faces several challenges at present, with the construction of Ethiopia’s Gibe III Dam posing the biggest threat to the lake’s hydrology. Located upstream of Lake Turkana, this dam now collects water from the Omo River that previously flowed unimpeded into the lake. As a result, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the Lake Turkana National Parks on the List of World Heritage in Danger on 28th June 2018.
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Take a trip to northern Kenya to learn more about this endangered site and its significance.
http://www.kws.go.ke/content/central-island-national-park
http://www.kws.go.ke/content/sibiloi-national-park
http://www.kws.go.ke/content/south-island-national-park