ABSTRACT
The African Great Lakes are unfolding human experiments on an enormous scale; even the most “pristine” of these lakes are undergoing rapid environmental change, the origins of which lie in regional human activities. Understanding changes in the lakes, and identifying possible remedial actions can only be done in the context of understanding changes in human demographics and land use in the region. Disturbance factors affecting the lakes are interactive, but can be categorized as follows: 1) Fishing activities, including overfishing and lack of effective management practices; 2) Discharge of pollutants; 3) Damage to watersheds, leading to cultural eutrophication and excess sedimentation problems; 4) Introduction of exotic species and translocations of species within lakes, leading to extinctions and drastically altered community structures, and; 5) Regional climate change.
There is a growing consensus that developing effective conservation strategies will require substantive changes in how the lakes are treated. These include legal reforms, renewal of monitoring and enforcement activities, development of incentive programs for improved land/lake use, management planning based on local ecological realities, more effective community participation in conservation planning and decision making and improvements in international cooperation. Development of protected reserves is a priority in all lakes both for economic reasons and for the maintenance of biodiversity. Long-term records of lake change are needed to assess the significance of our scanty historical data; this can be effected through greater use of paleolimnological proxy records. Measures are underway in all of these areas, but rapid progress is critical to prevent further environmental degradation of the lakes.
