Lake Malawi

Lake Malawi National Park was established in 1980 at the southern end of Lake Malawi, around the Nankumba peninsula and several islands, and protects some 94 km² of land and water. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1984.

It was the first national park in the world created specifically to protect freshwater fish. Lake Malawi, one of the great lakes of the African Rift and one of the oldest and deepest in the world, holds the greatest diversity of freshwater fish known in any single lake: it is estimated to contain between seven hundred and a thousand cichlid species, the overwhelming majority endemic.

That evolutionary radiation is what gives it its scientific value: from a few ancestors, the cichlids have diversified in form, colour, diet and behaviour until they occupy every available niche, and they make this lake a case study in speciation comparable to that of Darwin's finches. The mbuna, the rock-dwelling cichlids, often show distinct and genetically differentiated populations on outcrops separated by barely a few hundred metres of sandy bottom. Overfishing, sedimentation from deforestation in the catchment and collection for the aquarium trade are its main threats.