Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa at 69400 km2. It lies between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and is a source of the Nile. For thousands of years the native inhabitants around Lake Victoria have fished it, drying the fish in the sun for food. In 1982 development agencies decided to tackle hunger in the region by introducing a species of perch to the lake. An ecological and human disaster, the perch could not be preserved by drying in the sun so the inhabitants cut down large areas of the surrounding forests to smoke the fish, resulting in deforestation which had knock-on effects for the wildlife. In addition, the perch devastated the original species of fish in the lake, resulting in far less fish for the inhabitants to eat, and more hunger in the region. Research Lake Victoria
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Abbreviations
Gazetteer
Research Lake Victoria
