Threat to birds: Meerut admn bans sale of Chinese strings

The advisory came after the department officials rescued three Barn owls and one Hornbill upon finding them hanging with strings on trees last week. The department has appealed to the people to refrain from flying kites on Basant Panchami before 9 am and after 4 pm, considered as the roosting time of the birds.

Meerut’s Additional District Magistrate (ADM), Anil Kumar Upadhyay told The Indian Express that the administration has imposed ban on the sale of Chinese strings in the district because people, too, were getting injured.

“Chinese strings are very sharp and strong. Contact with them, even when moving on road, are causing problems as commuters get injured on their neck, face and hands. Ban has been imposed for an indefinite time,” the ADM said, adding that officials were keeping watch on the shops selling kites to ensure that Chinese strings are not sold.

Meerut Divisional Forest Officer Sushant Sinha said that he issued the advisory upon learning that birds were sustaining fatal injuries after getting trapped in Chinese threads stuck on trees with kites.

He added that local country-made threads do not cause such injuries to the birds or humans.

“As we can not put a ban on flying kites, people have been appealed to fly kites between 9 am and 4 pm on Basant Panchami when movement of birds remain minimum. On other days, they have been appealed to avoid using Chinese strings,” the DFO said.

Local administration officials are also sending bulk SMSes in the city to spread awareness among the kite flyers to go easy on the string and spare the avian population.

Kite flying is a favourite pastime for people on particular occasions like Makar Sankranti, Basant Panchami and Govardhan Pooja in UP with use of Chinese strings becoming a norm in the past two years.