Overview and Future Directions: The Summing-Up

Today there are between 3 million and 5 million flamingos, mostly Lesser Flamingos (Phoeciconaias minor), in Africa. Their collective biomass is about 8.2 kg or 9,000 English tons. That is more or less 2,600 elephants worth, or 133,000 flamingo biologists. To survive, these millions of flamingos need to eat as much as 1,200 tons of algae, diatoms, or invertebrates each day. But, all of their known populations are stable or declining, we think. And all have become dangerously dependent upon the whims of a mediumsized mammal with a population of 6 billion and a biomass of about 320 million tons.