Bird migration

Slovenian police caught 32,042 illegal migrants on the border last year, an increase of 214% on the year before and the highest figure since the migration crisis in 2015, largely due to a huge influx of persons from Afghanistan, Burundi, India, Pakistan and Russia.

The number of migrants arriving in Greece has dropped dramatically over the past two years, while the number of asylum-seekers living in the country has also fallen, Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis has said.

The number of irregular migrants deported from Türkiye in 2022 has soared to nearly 100,000, according to the Directorate General of Migration Management.

Türkiye has deported 97,448 irregular migrants since the new year as the number of deportations increased by 149 percent compared to the same period of 2021.

More than 29,000 people have died on migration routes to Europe since 2014, and 5,000 migrants have died in the last two years alone, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a report published yesterday.

The IOM warned of "increasing deaths along migration routes across the Mediterranean, along land borders to Europe and within the continent".

Turkish Coast Guard teams have rescued 67 irregular migrants pushed back by Greece in two operations conducted off the Aegean province of Balıkesir.

Turkish Deputy Interior Minister has slammed Greek minister for his allegations about the country forcing 92 migrants to cross into Greece and stripping them naked before doing so.

"Since you could not find a single human rights case in Türkiye, you are trying to reveal the image of your persecution as if it happened in Türkiye," İsmail Çataklı said in a social media post.

A 10-day-long photography exhibition of Istanbul birds by prominent birdwatcher and photojournalist Alper Tüydeş has been inaugurated at the Turkish metropolis.

Photos of migratory and resident bird species dominant in Istanbul and its surroundings were presented in the exhibition held at Galataport in the Karaköy quarter.

Turkey's first animal hospital, which was established in the 19th century in the northwestern province of Bursa for the care of migratory birds, especially storks, is playing a key role in the treatment of stray animals.

Conservationists and the European Union say any plan must safeguard Ulcinj Salina's importance to migratory birds, but an unresolved ownership dispute is frustrating efforts to set those protections in stone.

The Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds will mark the World Migratory Bird Day observed globally on October 9 through a video installation in the Sofia subway. The screens in the subway will broadcast the flights of the Egyptian vulture, the red-breasted goose and the little bald eagle to Africa, Cape of Good Hope, as well as from Arctic Russia to our lands.