Rescuers in Gujarat state are collecting dozens of exhausted birds that fall daily as the scorching heat wave dries up water sources.
Rescuers in India’s western state of Gujarat are picking up dozens of exhausted and dehydrated birds that fall every day as a scorching heat wave dries up water sources in the state’s largest city, veterinarians say. and animal rescuers.
Large swaths of South Asia are drying up in the the hottest summer in decades, prompting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to warn of increased fire risks.
Doctors at an animal hospital run by the nonprofit Jivdaya Charitable Trust in Ahmedabad said they have treated thousands of birds in recent weeks, adding that dozens of flying birds, such as pigeons or kites, are brought in by rescuers daily.
“This year has been one of the worst in recent times. We have seen a 10 percent increase in the number of birds that need to be rescued,” said Manoj Bhavsar, who works closely with the trust and has been rescuing birds for more than a decade.
Animal doctors at the trust-run hospital were seen feeding the birds multivitamin tablets and injecting water into their mouths with syringes on Wednesday.
Health officials in Gujarat have issued notices to hospitals to set up special wards for heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses due to the rising temperatures.
Climate change causes heat waves
All current heat waves bear the unmistakable and measurable footprint of global warming, leading experts in quantifying the effects of climate change on extreme weather he said Wednesday.
The burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests have released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to also increase the frequency and intensity of many floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical storms, they detailed in a report on the state of the science. .
“There is no doubt that climate change is a huge game-changer when it comes to extreme heat,” Friederike Otto, a scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, told the AFP news agency.
Extreme heat waves, like the heat wave that gripped South Asia in March and April, are already the deadliest extreme events, he said.
“Every heat wave in the world is now getting stronger and more likely to happen due to human-caused climate change,” Otto and co-author Ben Clarke, of the University of Oxford, said in the report, released as a paper. informative for the media. .