Журнал Viche 2006 №12

№12, 2006

Pelicans - a pink pride of Kinbourne! They still wait for the President's decree...

June 5 - The World day of environment protection

- Seven o'clock in the morning. Pelicans have had breakfast and now they are becoming acquainted with each other, they are communicating and looking for a couple. They are like people! - Zinoviy Yosypovych Petrovych tells (in the photo), the head of the regional landscape park "Kinbourne's spit", examining the resting flock on a lake in binoculars. The person, who knows a lot about birds, understands their language, behaviour and even reads their thoughts!

- Pelicans - a pink pride of Kinbourne, - he continues.- Today we counted 2.5 thousand individuals. But there were 5 thousand last year! And it's out of 8 thousand individuals of European population. Drama: they can't acquire their family because of lack of fodder. Thus there are only two young pelicans in all flock; they differ in colour of their plumage. An average pelican lives for 30 years, it becomes pink only on the third or the fourth year of life and until then it is brown. The number of these birds has reached a critical level, and if the appropriate measures are not taken, in 10 - 20 years Ukraine may lose them. And there is a way out: it is necessary to provide a fodder base by making conditions of fish coming by five or six canals from sea and coastal lakes into 400 Kinbourne's lakes. Most of them are concerned with each other. The 80 thousand hryvnas project was done a year ago, but there is no money for its realization. The price of one canal that meets the requirements of ecological standards reaches 300 thousand hryvnas.