Refilling Lake Kuyucuk After It Dried to Dust

Lake Kuyucuk is a 245-hectare steppe lake in Kars province, designated Türkiye's thirteenth Ramsar site on 28 August 2009 and the first in the east of the country, with more than 230 bird species recorded around it. Groundwater extraction and drought dried it completely in 2012 and again in 2018 and 2019, and the bird community collapsed. KuzeyDoğa Society, founded in 2008 by ornithologist Çağan Şekercioğlu after five years of biodiversity survey work in Kars and Iğdır, pushed a restoration with the Kars Special Provincial Administration, the national parks directorate and the state water works to repair the feeding streams and bring water back; 110 bird species returned once the lake refilled. The society also runs one of Türkiye's two year-round bird ringing stations in the Aras valley, was the first organisation to satellite-track wolves in the country, and lobbied through three and a half years of camera-trap and tracking evidence to win Türkiye's first wildlife corridor — a 2,500-hectare, 4.5-million-tree reforestation linking Sarıkamış-Allahuekber National Park toward the Caucasus.