Navi Mumbai: Officials from the forest department have put up awareness poster at Airoli bridge in order to discourage people from feeding junk food to sea birds as it is not only unhealthy for them, but also it could lead to accidents.

The wrong practice of feeding junk food like wafers, gathiya and other fried and oily snacks to wetland birds along the creek and seaside led to accidental injuries for three seagulls at the Airoli bridge this Tuesday. Fortunately, an animal activist noticed them and immediately sought help to rescue the seagulls.

The range forest officer, Seema Adgaonkar, told TOI, “We have now displayed a prominent poster at Airoli bridge to help the public understand that it is not right to feed seabirds junk food. We will also be carrying out similar awareness drives at Vashi, and also Mumbai sites like Marine Drive and Gateway of India, where this unhealthy trend of feeding unhealthy food to the birds has also been noticed,” she said.

Adgaonkar added that on Tuesday this week, animal activists had contacted her to inform that three seagulls were injured after swooping down towards the bridge to pick up junk food.

“It is a very bad practice to give potato chips and such similar snacks to the birds, since it can lead to accidents as seen along the Airoli bridge today. One of our members, Chandramani Yadav, witnessed how morning joggers offer junk food along the side of the bridge to the birds. This leads to a large number of terns, gulls and other wetland birds swooping down to eat the snacks, while the road traffic zips past at a high speed on the bridge. Three seagulls were injured as a result, after unknown vehicles grazed past them,” said activist and honorary wildlife warden of Thane Forest, Sunish Subramanian.

He added that the three injured seagulls were rescued by his group, Plant and Animals Welfare Society (PAWS-Mumbai) and later given basic first aid. “Later in the day, as the condition of the disoriented seagulls became better, we released them near the Flamingo Park in Airoli, in the presence of forest officer, Seema Adgaonkar,” added Subramanian.

It is a very bad practice to give potato chips and such similar snacks to the birds, since it can lead to accidents as seen along the Airoli bridge. One of our members witnessed how morning joggers offer junk food along the side of the bridge to the birds. This leads to a number of terns, gulls and other wetland birds swooping down to eat the snacks, while traffic zips past

