Lake Kariba

The book I read to research this post was A Wilderness Called Kariba by Dale Kenmuir which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book is about the wildlife on Lake Kariba and is written by someone who worked in maintaining the wildlife in that area for many years. Kariba was a man made lake on the border between Rhodesia & Zambia & was the largest man made lake in the world. It was formerly the River Zambezi and it used to go from one extreme to another in terms of flooding and becoming drought stricken. In 1974 there was an emergency when the river flooded and many land animals became trapped. This made the news and got the area well known so at the time it started to become a bit of a tourist destination. When the lake was built it stabilized the flooding and helped maintain fish stocks all year round. Some people thought the eels which populate the lake would become depleted due to them being unable to get past the 420 foot dam but they are thought to negotiate the network of rivers in this area so when they migrate to a point east of Madagascar to breed they can get back. The predominant fish in this area is tigerfish which are huge aggressive fish that eat their prey whole. There aren’t many small fish in this area due to the huge shoals of tigerfish and their voracious appetite. With the creation of the lake many trees have submerged and died but supply a habitat for the fish. This book is only short but I really enjoyed reading it and it’s the kind of place that would be difficult to visit with the current problems in Zimbabwe which is of course the current name for what was Rhodesia.