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Thousands of birds migrating across a nature reserve on Iran's Caspian coast have been found dead, unnerving environmental activists and encouraging an investigation into the issue.An investigation confirmed speculations by Mazandaran province's chief veterinarian Seyed Hossein Razvani that the birds died from food poisoning – specifically avian botulism, which is contracted by the consumption of infected maggots brought on by rising water temperatures, according to the BBC."The number of carcasses grew daily over the course of a week from 2,000 to 6,000, and local officials expect to find another 2,000 soon," Ebtekar newspaper reported, regarding the Miankaleh Peninsula.The National Veterinary Organization and Environmental Protection Agency determined that "sanitary containment measures" should be enacted within the region, while the Mazandaran environmental department prohibited the hunting of these migratory birds, considering their condition has the potential to affect human health.The Miankaleh wetland nature preserve, recognized by the UN in 1979, is home to nearly 250,000 migratory birds, many of them pelicans and flamingos, that migrate to the peninsula each winter to lay their eggs.However, almost 20% of the wetlands preserve has been lost, partly due to climate change and the reduction in rainfall, but also due to man-made issues such as hunting, fishing, deforestation and illegal tampering with water channels."Water use in the agriculture sector is unsustainable, and means that we have not been able to adapt ourselves to current conditions," Hossein Ali Ebrahimi, director of Mazandaran province's environment department, told the Tehran Times last summer.