Tuz Lake's new water system averts mass flamingo deaths

ANKARA

As diligent efforts continue to sustain the country’s flamingo population, the new water system at Tuz Lake — home to the largest flamingo colony in the Mediterranean — has successfully prevented mass flamingo deaths caused by water shortages this year.

This development follows the General Directorate of Nature Conservation’s well-drilling initiative in 2022, which aims to allow flamingos access to water during severe droughts. The system manages this by providing water to the hatching area, known as "kindergarten," via a 4-kilometer pipeline utilizing solar-powered motor pumps.

“We are taking care of Anatolia’s most sensitive guests. In order to supply water to the Tuz Lake Special Environmental Protection Area, we established a well and installed a 4-kilometer pipeline. We monitored the situation day by day afterward. We looked after flamingo chicks diligently,” the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum said in a social media post.

The minister further added that this year they detected a total of 4,300 flamingo chicks in the "kindergarten" area.

Tuz Lake, the second-largest lake in the country and one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world, has long been a hatching ground for flamingos. However, the drought, caused by a lack of rainfall and excessive groundwater use, drained the lake, making it difficult for flamingos to find food.

Professor Dr. Ahmet Karataş, the project coordinator, emphasized that the project managed to get to the root of this problem and that flamingos were released into the wild without any issues this year.