PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Far East, April 3 (RIA Novosti, Oksana Guseva) - Local officials on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East said Monday they had banned the spring bird hunt amid fears of a growing bird flu pandemic.

A local official said the move was a bid to eliminate potential sources of the lethal bird-flu virus. The hunt is scheduled to start between April 26 and May 7 and end on May 5-14, depending on the district.

Official data says hunters shoot hundreds of geese and more than 60,000 ducks every spring in Kamchatka, a stopover area for migrating birds from Japan, China and the Korean peninsula.

Officials considered banning hunting for wild birds in 2004, but experts said the possibility the virus could hit the peninsula was extremely small.

Over 1.3 million birds have died of bird flu or been culled in Russia in three outbreaks of bird flu since July 2005, but no human cases of the virus have been diagnosed in the country.

More than 200 people have already contracted bird flu worldwide, mainly in Southeast Asia, and over 100 have died. No cases of human bird flu have been reported in Russia.