By Alex Mita
THE VETERINARY Services said yesterday they believed the recent death of 20 flamingos at the Larnaca salt lake was caused by lead poisoning.
The head of the veterinary services Klitos Andreou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that scientists who carried out post mortem examinations on the dead birds had found large quantities of lead pellets fired at a clay pigeon range close to the lake.
“We believe the birds swallowed pellets fired from the range,” he said adding it would only take a small amount of lead to poison the birds.
“These birds feed on shrimps from the bottom of the lake and at night they congregate at the centre of the lake,” Andreou said.
“Their beaks are specially designed to sieve the mud and water from the lake bed leaving only the shrimp and plankton in their beaks which they swallow. But because the pellets are small they stay in the beak and are swallowed — and lead is a really toxic metal.”
“The symptoms we have seen so far lead to the assumption that lead poisoning is the cause of death.”
But Andreou cautioned the Veterinary Services’ findings were based only on preliminary examinations.
“We have sent mud and water samples for toxicological and forensic examination and I am sure the results will shed more light into the issue,” Andreou said.
House Environment Committee president George Lillikas of AKEL told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that if it was lead poisoning that had killed the flamingos then the entire salt lake would have to be thoroughly cleaned.
“It is still unclear whether the death of the birds was caused by lead poisoning, but if that is the case, the entire salt lake should be emptied and cleaned to prevent more deaths, something that would cost a lot of money,” Lillikas said, pledging to have the shooting range removed from the area.
“We will bring the matter up when the House reopens after the elections and we will do everything within our power to see whether we can have the clay pigeon range removed or have the shooters fire in another direction so the pellets don’t fall into the salt lake,” Lillikas said.
Green Party deputy George Perdikis said yesterday it was high time the shooting range as well as other issues around the salt lake were addressed by the government in order to safeguard the future of the birds.
“That shooting range is illegal,” he claimed.
“We have been saying this all the time but I will say it again, the government does not care. They don’t care about the sewage pipe that will be built around the lake and they don’t care that the airport has taken over some of the area designated for the wetlands.”
Perdikis said the greens had taken their own samples and sent them for examination.
“We cannot at this time be certain that the death of the flamingos was caused by the lead pellets,” he said.
“However, we will wait for the results of our examination and then we will act. If the cause of the problem is the shooting range then I can’t wait until we have enough money to buy a bulldozer and tear the whole place down.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
