Birds bear brunt, 22 injured

Hyderabad:Animal rescuers and officials of the forest and fire department rescued as many as 22 birds entangled in the glass-coated manja between January 8 and 15.
Of those, nine birds were rescued on the day of Sankranti. Apart from pigeons and crows, rescue teams found two Barn Owls and eight Black Kites that suffered deep cuts due to manja.
Animal rescuers, who are expecting the numbers to increase in the next couple of days, said many birds have sustained severe injuries, some of them fatal.
Pradeep Nair, of Animal Warriors Conservation Society said, “Our team has been attending rescue cases of birds entangled in manja the entire week. While we were able to save almost all the birds, the ones that suffered potentially fatal injuries were shifted to the rescue centre for treatment. We request people to remove the tangled remains of kite flying thread from their premises and check roofs and trees for threads as there is every possibility of a bird getting trapped in coming months.”
Meanwhile, forest officials seized 20kg of banned glass-coated manja in and around Hyderabad on Thursday. To curb usage of synthetic manja for kite flying, 13 teams of forest staff searched 200 shops and seized 111.5 km of synthetic manja. Forest department officialssaid cases would be booked against repeat offenders.