KARACHI, Nov 24: Sixteen pelicans, most of them apparently caught from the wild, now live in Safari Park, a visit to the park showed.

The pelicans had come as a donation to the Safari Park 10 days ago and were recently released into its lake. The collection comprises 10 Dalmatian pelicans and six rosy pelicans.

`The birds were pinioned (the act of surgically removing pinion joint to preventflying) and then released after being kept under observation for a week,` said Safari Park`s additional director Safari Dr Kazim Hussain.

Pinioning, he said, was required only once otherwise flight feathers were needed to be trimmed every three months to keep birds in captivity. `Local anaesthesia was used for the process and then the treated part was bandaged. Coldweather is recommended for the surgery as infection chances are very low in the season,` he explained.

Pelicans are protected under the Sindh Wildlife Ordinance, 1972 and only a person with a licence can keep the birds.

According to sources, the wildlife department has not issued any permit for keeping pelicans in captivity since long.

`Many of these birds had been given away by individuals who were finding it difficult to manage them or had been purchased from the Empress Market where I found these animals suffering in poor conditions,` said Umair bin Zahid, the bird donor.

He added that the collection also included some which were born at his farm.

He had not donated his entire pelican stock and was now left with four pairs.

Speaking to Dawn, wildlife conservator Dr Fehmida Firdous said that the department had not issued any permit for keeping pelicans for a long period as it was not generally requested to.

`However, a permit could be issued for keeping a pair as a pet.

The bird donor in question holds a zoo permit and it`s possible that it had acquired a bird pair years back and it has been breeding there at his farm,` she said.

The department, according to Dr Firdous, had raided the Empress Market many times and fined people for selling pelicans.Safari Park director Salman Shamsi was not available for comments. Commenting on the donation, a senior zoo official said that pelicans did not breed easily as people generally lacked basic knowledge of their management and failed to provide animals the right habitat.

`They are migratory birds and it has never been heard that a local resident population of the bird has developed at our lakes in the interior of Sindh. The zoo gets these birds from poachers. Only two baby pelicans were said to have survived at the zoo in two decades,` he said.

According to the information available on the net, the rosy pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus) also known as the great white pelican, the Eastern white pelican or white pelican breeds from Southeastern Europe through Asia and in Africa in swamps and shallow lakes.

The Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) breeds from Southeastern Europe to India and China in swamps and shallow lakes.

This huge bird is the largest of the pelicans and one of the largest living bird species. The diet of both species of pelicans mainly consists of fish.