The three lakes which make up the Kenya Lake System World Heritage site are subject to pronounced and unpredictable fluctuations in rainfall, water levels and alkalinity – factors which determine the movements of flamingos and other birds between these lakes, and others beyond. Waterbird counts over the past 20 years suggest that bird populations are stable, but their distribution has changed, with uncertainties over the future of the lakes as the catchment areas come under progressively more intensive land use, with the loss of wetlands through livestock grazing, with increasingly large volumes of water abstracted upstream for agriculture, whilst floods are becoming more severe, with the associated sediments carried into and accumulating within the lakes. Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley, Kenya – Peter Howard by BIOPAMA is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0