‘Ministry extending efforts to conserve flamingos in Lake Tuz’

ANKARA

As part of the rescue measures taken by the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry, flamingos in Lake Tuz are being provided with the necessary support to conserve and protect them, Environment Minister Murat Kurum claims.

“We are working day and night not to lose any baby flamingo,” Kurum said on Aug. 19 in a tweet.

Listing measures his ministry has taken, Kurum first mentioned “delivering water with tankers to the partly dried lake.” The ministry then constructed a 4-kilometer-long pipeline to help pump water to the lake.

“We delivered water, established kilometers-long pipeline, and provided support [to conserve] flamingos,” he proudly said in a series of tweets.

“For God’s sake, we had flamingos live. Now they have grown up and are ready to fly and migrate,” he added.

Lake Tuz, Türkiye’s second-largest lake in Central Anatolia, has shrunk by 30 percent since the 1930s, and experts warned that the lake could disappear in 30 years if necessary measures were not taken. Following the warnings, the ministry, last year, started a project to save the lake, which is the only natural nesting ground for flamingos in Türkiye.

Mustafa Cemal Darılmaz, the dean of the Aksaray University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, said in April that “the number of the flamingos coming to the region was higher compared to last year.”