Venice welcomes record flamingo numbers as wetlands are restored
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Tens of thousands of flamingos, known as ‘fenicotteri’, are now wintering in the Venetian Lagoon, appearing in unprecedented numbers.
Venice’s lagoon recorded a peak of nearly 24,000 wintering flamingos in 2025.
Environmentalists view the flamingos’ presence as a positive indicator of the lagoon’s health and its suitability as a feeding ground.
A project to reconstruct salt marshes in the more isolated southern lagoon has raised prospects that flamingo numbers will further increase, while also drawing the birds away from competing human uses in the north.
Flamingos, typically associated with nesting sites in Spain and France, first began to appear in the vast Venetian Lagoon in the early 2000s.
