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A combination of human population growth, unsustainable development, and desertification, are threatening the river Niger's ability to maintain essential food and water supplies to local people. River flows in the basin are decreasing at the same time as fishing pressure is increasing, leading to drastic declines in fishery yields. Deforestation and farming of fragile soils is leading to siltation of river channels. Other pressures come from dam building and the highly invasive water hyacinth, introduced from Latin America.

The ancient city of Bussa once stretched linearly along the River Niger, its name derived from ancient travelers and traders. Today, Dogo'n garri ("long city" in the Hausa language) lies sunk in Lake Kainji, in Nigeria. It is immersed with the rich alluvial flood plains of the River Niger, which supported dry-season arable cropping, while the lush stands of White Burugu (Echinochloa pyramidalis) provided dry-season grazing for nomadic and resident livestock.

© WWF-Newby Niger

The third longest river in Africa (after the Nile and the Congo), the River Niger rises from the Fouta Djallon highlands near the Sierra Leone -Guinea border. Known as Jobila in Mali and Kwara within Nigeria and flowing northeast through Mali then southeast into Nigeria, the Niger is roughly 4,200km long with a catchment area of 1.25 m sq km.

Along its course, the upper Niger approaches the southern tip of the Sahara desert around Timbuktu, where it separates into several braided arms to form an extensive inland delta.

Monsoon rains fall between May and September at the headwaters of the Niger. The water from these events produces a surge that expands the inland delta to as much as 25,000 sq km but which shrinks to 4,000 sq km in dry periods.

The semi-arid region around Timbuktu receives very little rainfall. This surge is therefore, an important lifeline for the local people. The surge is dissipated in the inland delta, and clear water leaves the delta to flow towards Nigeria arriving in Kainji (as the familiar Kainji peak floods of January to March) 6 months later. This flood of clear water is known as the "black flood". It is distinguished from the "white floods", which are silt-laden floodwaters originating from rainfall in the catchment of the River Sokoto and its tributaries (April to September). This flood arrives in Kainji in September and cascades down the Niger recharging numerous floodplain wetlands until it is discharged into the Gulf of Guinea in the coastal Niger delta: this huge delta (32,260sq km) is a complex of mangrove-dominated wetland made up of river floodplains, tidal floodplains and chains of barrier islands.

	© WWF/J Newby Niger

The two major floods - the black flood and the white flood - influenced the rhythm of life of human, livestock and wildlife populations resident in the River Niger floodplain. The people of Dogo'n garri, the inner savanna and semi-arid lands of Mali, through millennia of association with the flood rhythm of the Niger developed a fadama agricultural system producing two crops in the year; one in the rainy season by rain-fed methods and the other using residual moisture from receding floods during the dry season.

Livestock - grazed flood - recession pastures and Palaearctic birds found ideal wintering and passage conditions for migration. Fishermen understood and benefited from the local breeding migration (during the white flood) of various economically important fish. In the lower reaches and in addition to fishing, large transport and goods-ferrying vessels would go up to Lokoja at the confluence of the Niger and River Benue with goods to be traded in Kaduna, Kano and Niger Republic. In 1968 however, the Kainji dam was built resulting in a water impoundment of 13,000sq km, called Lake Kainji. The dam displaced 44,000 people and a variety of wildlife species. Most of the people were resettled in New Bussa. For terrestrial wildlife species, the Kainji Lake National Park served as a refuge. Aquatic species such as hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) and the local manatee (Trichechus senegalensis) died out probably due to the disappearance of aquatic macrophytes from their habitat in the early years of the lake. Poaching by migrant tribes caused the disappearance of crocodiles and giant tortoises. The development of a distinctive macrophytic flora of Red Burugu (Echinochloa stagnina), in association with False Burugu (Vossia cuspidata) and the floating Sacciolepis africana in Lake Kainji during the late 1980s occurred at a time when schools of hippopotamus were sighted. However, the optimism of conservationists that the manatee would return, because of aquatic macrophytes in the lake, has not yet been realized. The recent invasion of the lake by the water hyacinth (Echhorinia crassipes) is not encouraging.