Birds flood lake
Thu, November 20 2008
“Of the nearly 60,000 birds, 20,000 were sighted in the lake’s Nalabana island alone,” Sudarsan Panda, chief executive of the Chilika Development Authority, told IANS.
Chilika is spread across the three districts of Puri, Khurda and Ganjam along the east coast. It was declared one of the six wetlands of international importance for Arctic and Central Asian waterfowl by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
Every year about a million migratory birds from places like Siberia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Himalayas come to the lake during winter. The birds start arriving in October and stay up to March.
The state government has taken several steps to protect the birds.
