To promote and preserve the biodiversity of Lake Tanganyika for the sustainable benefit of its inhabitants through a partnership with the community and the government of Zambia.
Lake Tanganyika is one of the most astounding natural habitats on earth. The longest lake in the world containing almost 15% of all liquid surface freshwater on our planet, this ancient water body provides habitat to animals that have evolved over millions of years and continue doing so at a astounding rate.It’s great productivity and biodiversity support millions of people in the Tanganyika basin. There is no other place on our planet like Lake Tanganyika; a vast ecosystem inextricably linked to humankind from when man first learned to use fire in the escarpments above this iconic rift lake. Ensuring its continued health and biodiversity is more than a conservation effort, it is humanities duty.
Lake Tanganyika has given life for an estimated 12 million years and is home to some 1,000 species of animal life, almost all of which are found no where else. From the smallest shell dwelling cichlids to enormous predatory Lates, fish are the most visible of the lakes inhabitants. But this ecosystem is reliant on a complete circle of life, from headwaters in mist shrouded mountains of the Congo to the elephants that ensure the diversity of the unique Sumbu-Itigi forests along the southern lake shore.
Sadly man has used and abused lake Tanganyika for millennia and and this circle of life that supports so many is threatened. Over-fishing, poor fishing methods, population growth, land clearing and poaching of mammals is all taking its toll and threatening the very essence of what makes Tanganyika special.
Conservation Lake Tanganyika is a non profit organisation created in 2012 by concerned stakeholders in the Southern Part of the Lake. We firmly believe that that development and poverty reduction should go hand in hand with biodiversity conservation of the Lake, these goals are mutually beneficial. Integral to the way forward are protected areas that provide hotspots of diveristy, breeding areas for commercial fish species and intact forests to feed clean waters into the lake to ensure its continued health and productivity.
In Zambia’s southern part of the lake lies Nsumbu National Park, a microcosm of the challenges and opportunities that is Lake Tanganyika. It is here where we concentrate out work in the hopes that success here can demonstrate a wider benefit to the entire Lake Tanganyika system.