News from the RSPB site
A lifeline has been thrown to the one million lesser flamingos of Tanzania's Lake Natron, threatened by huge industrial development on their most important breeding site in the world.
The plan to build a soda ash plant on the lake, in northern Tanzania in the Great Rift Valley, has been thrown out for now and the developers, Lake Natron Resources, have been ordered to produce a new and better environmental statement and consider other sites for soda ash extraction. The firm is jointly owned by the Indian company TATA Chemicals and the Tanzanian Government.
A major victory
Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB, which is campaigning vigorously against the development, said: “The soda ash proposal is just plain wrong and the decision today is a major victory for conservation and for common sense.
'The birds are not safe yet but the developers have been sent back to square one and set questions we do not think they can answer. Places like Lake Natron belong to the people and wildlife of Africa not to multinationals to exploit for their own short-term gain.'
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