MAKHACHKALA, Russia — Authorities in a province in southern Russia are trying to save hundreds of endangered Dalmatian pelicans starving in the Caspian Sea after it froze for the first time in years.
Hundreds of the grey-white birds with curly nape feathers are jostling one another in a rare patch of unfrozen water at a shipyard near the city of Makhachkala, the capital of the southern Russian province of Dagestan.
Dagestan’s Nature Protection Ministry spokesman Arslan Dydymov said Tuesday that about 20 birds have died of hunger despite hundreds of kilograms of fish that his ministry and a local lawmaker are purchasing daily to feed them.
The birds flew to Makhachkala last week from the frozen deltas of the Volga and Terek rivers up north.
Fewer than 1,400 Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest, live in southern Russia.
