Lake Urmia drought destroys ecosystem of nearing wetland

/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

The drought of Lake Urmia has had devastating consequences for the ecosystem in Iran.

Some 2,000 birds at a wetland near Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran have died over the past 15 days.

Parviz Arasteh, the director of the environmental department in the provincial government of West Azerbaijan has stated that the deaths were not due to bird flu, IRNA news agency reported.

He said the birds were of different kinds, mostly coot, cotton pygmy goose and mountain cock.

Lake Urmia, the biggest inland Iranian lake, has shrunk in the past decades and is facing a critical situation. If the lake dries out completely, serious environmental hazards will threaten the lives of people in the area.

Lake Urmia is the third largest saltwater lake on earth, with a surface area of 6,000 square kilometers. The lake becomes a temporary home for birds during their migratory periods. Over 70 percent of Lake Urmia's water has dried up. The level of water has been declining since 1995.

Arasteh went on to say that experts surmise that low precipitation and the flow of domestic and industrial waste into the wetland may lie as the cause.

Low precipitation and an unbridled usage of surface and underground waters have run Iran into a serious water crisis.

The lake's drought has already had an impact on the fauna and flora of the region. Environmental experts warned that the measures taken by the Iranian government are merely not enough to save the lake.

The volume of water input to Lake Urmia has decreased by 100 percent in the past two decades, according to Iranian officials.

The volume of water stood at over five billion cubic meters until 1991. It then started falling and decreased to 2.5 billion cubic meters over two decades.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani set up a working group titled the Committee for Urmia Lake Restoration at a cabinet meeting in 2013.The committee prepared a 9-year plan to restore the lake, with 2023 being the year when the lake would return to its full capacity.