Lake Nakuru

Declared in 1961 as the first bird sanctuary in Africa, Lake Nakuru became world-famous in the 20th century for holding, at times, as many as a million and a half flamingos, whose massed ranks along the alkaline shore led Roger Tory Peterson himself to call it the greatest bird spectacle in the world. Swings in the lake's level and salinity, made worse by climate change and by the growth of the town around it, have cut the flamingo presence sharply in recent decades, pushing part of the population on to other lakes of the Kenyan Rift. The park, fully fenced since the 1980s, has been turned into one of the safest white and black rhino sanctuaries in Kenya.