A sanitation worker collects a dead pig from Shanghai's main waterway on March 11, 2013.
First it was thousands of dead pigs, now it’s thousands of dead ducks. The BBC reports that more than 1,000 bird carcasses were pulled from the Nanhe river in China’s Pengshan County in the southwest province of Sichuan.
Local officials were notified of the ducks Tuesday, county publicity spokseman Liang Weidong told China National Radio Sunday. The ducks, found inside more than 50 woven bags floating in the river, have since been disinfected and buried in a designated area. Authorities also emphasized the dead ducks pose no threat to livestock or the safety of local drinking water, state news agency Xinhua reports, but the cause of death remains unknown.
(MORE: Thousands of Dead Pigs Pulled from Shanghai River, Prompting Contamination Fears)
The recent discovery comes on the heels of the retrieval of more than 16,000 pigs from Shanghai’s Huangpu River, which does supply some of the financial hub’s drinking water. Local authorities spent the past two weeks fishing out the pig corpses, and released a statement Sunday that they were “basically finished,” the Phillipine Daily Inquirer reports. The death and mass dumping of the pigs is also unknown.
This latest development in China’s ongoing pollution debate sparked protest on weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “The dead pigs haven’t even disappeared yet, and now the dead ducks emerge – does this society enjoy being competitive?” weibo user sugarandsweet posted, according to the BBC.
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