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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2007

Bringing birds back to Iraq

 

BAGHDAD--Rediscovering and restoring the bird life of Iraq is an obsession for ornithologists who remember the nation as the crossing of flight paths for migratory species coming and going from all parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The Mesopotamian marshlands, twice the size of the Florida Everglades, were reputedly the richest birding habitat in the world before dictator Saddam Hussein drained 90% in 1991 to try to flush out rebels against his rule.

About 40% of the marshlands have been reflooded and restored since 2003. All 150 bird species known to have lived there in 1979 have been seen in recent winter-and-summer surveys, Birdlife International adviser Richard Porter told BBC News in January 2007.

That leaves many of the 237 species native to the rest of Iraq still largely unaccounted for, between habitat loss and decades of unrestrained shooting.

The effort to find and protect Iraq birds advanced with the January 25, 2007 publication of a Field Guide to the Birds of Iraq in Arabic, assembled by Iraqi and Jordanian birders and biologists who were funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, the World Bank, and the Ornithological Society of the Middle East.

Canada-Iraq Marshlands Initiative director Barry Warner hoped that the book would encourage Iraqis to better respect birds and bird habitat. But continued fighting tends to thwart most efforts on behalf of any animals, no matter how small.

Alabama Wildlife Center director Anne Miller and colleague Chris DePew, for instance, in June and July 2006 spent two months advising and encouraging civilian contractor John Mayberry by e-mail, as Mayberry worked to rehabilitate an injured fledgling Hutton's little owl that he discovered near the Baghdad airport.

"Mayberry made some progress," DePew told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "but unfortunately the owl died from the stress of a nearby mortar attack before he could be released into the wild."