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PROACT comments:
We went a little off target due to my misreading of information. But I think more good than harm was done. Let's try and be positive when it comes to tourism. It is preferable to stress the benefits of Ecotourism rather than threatening sanctions. The local people everywhere then tend to close ranks.
The text of the letter was changed yesterday as revised information came in:
Having read the article more than once I think on balance it will help. OK the Europeans got it slightly wrong but the 'informed' public now know that bird counts are being done (+ point for the Game Service) that a Ramsar site exists, the importance of the salt lakes and that the general secretary of the Cyprus Ornithological Society, Melis Charalambides is on top of his job. Score 4-1 to the birds as I read it.
Duck hunting at Larnaca Salt Lake? No way!
By Jean Christou
EUROPEAN bird lovers are up in arms over reports that the government had allowed or was planning to allow duck hunting on the Larnaca Salt Lakes. But game authorities said yesterday they have been misinformed.
Open e-mails addressed to the President and the government flooded into the Sunday Mail offices yesterday from furious Europeans, in an organised protest campaign.
One e-mail was from UK-based tour operator who said he would not put Cyprus back on his brochure until things had changed in Cyprus as regards hunting.
But Game Service chief Pantelis Hadjiyerou said yesterday that somehow people abroad had been misinformed. There is no such a thing, he said. There is no hunting in the Salt Lake. It's a protected area.
Hadjiyerou said the protestors were probably referring to an area on the road to Dromolaxia, which has been designated as a hunting region since last November.
It doesn't affect the salt lake and different types of legal game is being hunted there, he said. Hunting in that particular area of Larnaca has been going on for 100 years.
Hadjiyerou said none of the bird population has been affected on the Salt Lake. We do bird counts once a month and in the past two years there is evidence that the bird population on the Salt Lake has increased,' he said.
Melis Charalambides, general secretary of the Ornithological Society, confirmed that the area in question was not in or near the Salt Lake.
As long as it's not near the water there is no problem, he said, adding however that they would look into the issue further tomorrow.
On July 11 last year Cyprus deposited its instrument of accession to the Ramsar Convention with the Director-General of UNESCO, designating the Larnaca Salt Lake as its obligatory first Wetland of International Importance in the Ramsar List, which came into force on November 11, 2001.
The Salt Lake is a highly saline seasonal lake, which supports significant numbers of over-wintering and stopover water birds. The 'airport lake', the southern arm of the main lake which is adjacent to Larnaca Airport, is the main feeding area for flamingos.
Private land, both Greek and Turkish Cypriot, fringes part of the lake, but the lagoons are state-owned. The site was made a protected area in 1997.
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