NICOSIA, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Cypriot environmental organizations celebrated World Wetlands Day on Saturday, in an event aimed to raise awareness among families and children about the importance of wetlands for the planet.
Several families and children responded to the invitation of the Wetlands Cyprus NGO and gathered at the Athalassa National Park, on the fringes of Nicosia, to see birds spending winter in the wetland and watch how birds are ringed to follow track of them.
"We have invited people, families and their children to join us for some activities, such as ringing demonstration and birdwatching," Elena Markitani, communication officer of Bird Life Cyprus, told Xinhua as children milled around watching the bird ringing demonstration.
"Through the birdwatching we want to raise awareness about their natural environment, the importance of wetlands and the wild birds of Cyprus," she added.
World Wetlands Day is marked on Feb. 2 every year, and each year has a different theme. This year's theme is "Wetlands and climate change", a phenomenon that has already started to affect the eastern Mediterranean island as rain becomes sparse and dry land increases.
"Wetlands play a significant role in stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and in blunting the impacts of climate change," Bird Life said in its invitation to people to join its celebration of the day.
People found the experience of watching birds in the proper way and bird ringing very interesting. For a family was also an educational experience.
"Our children watch birds every day as they walk the dog in our village near Nicosia, but Rebecca, the eldest child is very interested as she wants to become a vet. So we thought she would like to see the bird ringing and to begin to find out more about different kinds of birds," said Mark Hellicar, who lives in a village near Nicosia.
The Athalassa Lake, as it is known to people, is a manmade lake next to a residential area, which attracts scores of birds every winter.
Cyprus has several natural wetlands, the biggest of them being the Larnaca salt lake, next to the city's airport, which becomes a dry salt bed in the summer but fills up with sea water in the autumn and attracts thousands of birds in the winter.
Most spectacular of them are pink feathered flamingos which attract thousands of watchers on weekends.
Another large wetland near the southern city of Limassol, known as the Akrotiri Lake within the British Air Base of the same name, also attracts thousands of ducks and flamingos.
