Illegal hunting in Danube Delta

As presented by hotNews, recently a lot of protected birds have been found shot in the Danube Delta, Uzlina area. Among them the people from Romanian Administration of the Danube Delta found two curly pelicans/dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus Crispus) killed and another two wounded, two pygmy cormorants (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus) shot dead, a swan killed and another one wounded.

This is really bad piece of news, considering that Pelecanus Crispus is one of the rare species for which the Danube Delta has been declared Reservation of Biosphere and part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. There are about 400 breeding pairs of Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus Crispus) in the Danube Delta, comparing 4000 pairs of common pelicans (Pelecanus Onocrotalus). Meantime the Dalmatian Pelican is the biggest bird in the Danube Delta, with it's 160-180 cm from the top of the beck to the rear of the tail, 11-15 kg (24-33 lbs) in weight and just over 3 m (10 ft) in wingspan.

I discussed about this with Outdoor Holidays' expert in birdwatching, Andrei Pârciog, and he assumes that people hunting birds illegally are not very interested of the species of birds they shot. While they don't know if they are hunting a Common Pelican or a Dalmatian Pelican, they DO KNOW they are hunting a pelican (confusing a pelican with another species is very improbable) therefore there are no circumstances to consider the fact less severe. They are, indeed, easy to differentiate, but the hunter (should i have said the killer ?) is not a bird-watcher or at least passionate by birds. Neither do they differentiate a number of other species of birds. Some of the hunters just come to the Danube Delta and shot whatever bird they see.

Let's hope more severe laws as well as better surveillance measures will stop this in the future.

Birds of Danube Delta

One of my passions are birds. I like birdwatching a lot and the Danube Delta is THE PLACE to go for birdwatching.
I have some images of Danube Delta birds on flickr.

For example this Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus Crispus) that I've seen on Sulina Arm of the Danube: