Unfavourable abode: Birds dying at Saidpur Hatchery

Lack of electricity, water and other facilities to be blamed.

ISLAMABAD:

Birds at the government-run Saidpur Hatchery are dying, mainly due to extreme heat spurred on by frequent power outages and non-availability of water. Three people run the hatchery and usually pay from their own pocket to keep the ball rolling.

An employee of the Rawalpindi wildlife department deputed at the hatchery said that they have had to repair the generator twice from their own money.

They also pitch in to purchase diesel for it. When they approach the department for money, they are told that funds are “not being released from Lahore”, the employee said.

The hatchery was set up in Saidpur Village for breeding  of different kinds of birds in 1986 by the Punjab wildlife department on land allotted by the Capital Development Authority.

It currently houses more than 100 birds of different kinds including peacocks, Australian and Korean birds, and about 70 chicks and 200 eggs. But all of them are severely threatened due to non-availability of basic provisions.

Birds that die at the hatchery are sent to a laboratory in Shamsabad for post-mortems, according to a worker. Most of the reports state the cause of death to be heat stroke, he added, blaming their deaths on the eight to ten hours of power cuts a
day and out-of-order generators.

The hatchery itself is in a dilapidated condition, with bars and fences to protect birds broken in different places.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2011.