Greek bird-lovers plead for storks

More than half of the storks killed in Greece die from electrocution by high voltage cables, the national ornithological society said on Friday, pleading for the country's power company DEI to take action.

More than half of the storks killed in Greece die from electrocution by high voltage cables, the national ornithological society said on Friday, pleading for the country's power company DEI to take action.

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"The survival of the storks is in the hands of the DEI. In other countries a third of storks are killed by power cables, but in Greece it is 50 per cent," ornithologist Thodoros Kominos said.

Storks tended to nest on electricity pylons, Kominos said, suggesting that as in other countries the DEI build nesting places for the birds more than a metre (three feet) above the cables to avoid electrocution.

Kominos said the destruction of habitats and intensive farming had also been responsible for an 80 percent fall in the number of storks in Greece in the past 50 years, from 9,190 pairs in 1958 to just 1,500 pairs in June.