Vultures found mysteriously poisoned, dead in eastern Turkey

ANTALYA – Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

Seven vultures were found poisoned by activists in one week in the Tuzluca district of the eastern province of Iğdır. Five of the wild birds died.

Three of the birds were found dead and two others died while in transit to medical treatment. Environmentalists who took action upon notices by locals managed to save two of the poisoned vultures.

Some 258 bird species are marked to be living in the Aras River Valley in Iğdır.

Çağan Şekercioğlu, the head of the green KuzeyDoğa Association, told the Doğan News Agency in Antalya that they think the birds were contaminated after they ate the bodies of poisoned dogs and foxes in the region.

“This is a very strong poison. We were able save two birds thanks to local people who informed us,” Şekercioğlu said.

“If the deaths continue, vultures, which reproduce very slowly and are very sensitive to poisons, may become extinct in the region. This is what happened in India and Africa,” he added.

Ayşegül Çoban, a local wildlife veterinarian, also guessed that the birds were poisoned due to their nutrition.

“We found one-and-a-half kilograms of liver in one of the bird’s stomachs. But maybe what we suspect will not prove to be true in the end,” Çoban said, adding that medical analysis would give a final result.

“We have never before come across such a thing ... This is not an ordinary kind of poison like one used against rats,” she said, adding that no traces of a hematocele, a collection of blood in a body cavity, were found.