Commercial development and predators along the Yucatán Peninsula have left the flamingo population there with just a small island to use for nesting.

Brought back from a meager 5,000 in the 50's, the flamingo population there has grown to more than 30,000.

Bonaire is also famed for its flamingo populations and its donkey sanctuary.

Scientists reckon that the flamingo population at Nakuru consumes about 250,000 kg of algae per hectare of surface area per year.

He said the flamingo populations should be monitored at least once every two years and that researchers needed to determine why mortality among chicks had been unusually high.

This in turn has increased the salinity of the lake's water, lowering the lake viability as home to thousands of migratory birds including the large flamingo populations.

The primary threat to the flamingo population is mining excavations, which occur at the end of the summer rainy season.

A study comparing the correlation between water availability and flamingo population determined that the number of flamingos was strongly correlated to the proportion of water in the lake.

Tilapia were introduced to the lake from Lake Magadi in 1962 and since that time the flamingo population has dwindled considerably.

The cyanotoxin, which was identified in the stomachs and fecal pellets of the birds, killed roughly 30,000 flamingos in the second half of 1999, and continues to cause mass fatalities annually, devastating the flamingo population.