Almost 60% of storks in Ararat region are polluted, as the Armenian branch of the German Society for the Conservation of Nature (NABU) informs. "This is a huge number, it speaks of a major environmental disaster in the region," the NABU warns. NABU has been conducting stork surveillance and census since 2020, with the aim of finding out the prevalence of storks, their sources of contamination, their causes and the number of polluted storks.
Studies are currently underway in Armavir Region. In their conversation with EcoLur, the NABU employee said that their employees have been making visits and are still making in all the communities in Ararat and Armavir Regions, where there are stork nests, recording how many nests there are in each community, how many storks, whether they are clean or dirty, how old they are. "We will publish more details in the form of infographics or analysis later. When we finish the work in Armavir Region, we will present a general analysis," the employee said. The latter informed that in addition to the registration work, at the moment they are also carrying out rescue work for storks.
In response to the question whether the birds are cleaned, the representative of the organization noted, "We are not doing any cleaning work, maybe we will open it soon. It is very difficult to finally clean the oil. If we try to clean it completely, we will damage the feathers, so the feathers are cleaned in the zoo as much as it is possible. We perform feather and water analysis to find out what material they are contaminated with. We are collecting feathers to send to the laboratory,” he said.
The problem of mass pollution of storks is repeated for the third year. Residents of Ararat and Armavir Regions and environmental NGOs have been beating an alarm signal about repeated cases of stork pollution since 2019. However, the problem has not been solved yet.
The probable cause of the pollution is the activity of the fish farms in the surrounding areas, as a result of which the rivers that serve the area for storks are polluted, as it is mentioned by locals, environmentalists and Environment Ministry. To EcoLur's observation whether this year we can also connect the main reason with the activity of fish farms, NABU employee responded, "The quantity, the material and the place are the same, it continues in the same way, moreover, it expands. But it is difficult to say exactly what it is, because there are several different versions why it arises, so it will be clear after the analysis."
July 16, 2021 at 15:43