Man-made lakes in tropical Africa and their biological potentialities

Abstract

The creation of enormous man-made lakes offers to biologists the opportunity to develop new environmental resources and to plan their careful exploitation. However, the formulation of useful biological management plans is handicapped by the fact that, in all cases to date, insufficient research effort has been put into the pre-impoundment phase. Further, the inherent variability of each lake-site—in physiography, climatology, geology, hydrology, and biogeography—makes prediction hazardous. Teams of research workers supported by national governments and the United Nations Development Programme are now established at most of the African man-made lakes. FAO are the usual agents implementing the United Nations effort, and it is to this Organization that we must look for coordination of the research effort, in the hope that this will lead to an early appreciation of the basic requirements for the biological management of these new resources.