Desiccation of Iraq marshes endangers migratory birds

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, May 6, 2020 (ENS) – To mark World Migratory Bird Day this Sunday, the nongovernmental organization Nature Iraq is joining its BirdLife International partners around the world to celebrate bird migration, and to highlight the difficulties facing some the world’s most threatened species.

The Mesopotamian marshes in the region of southern Iraq between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are especially important for wintering waterbirds, and Nature Iraq has worked to restore these marshes after they were 90 percent drained under Saddam Hussein’s regime. After several years of richer water flows, the marshes are again drying up because of drought and upstream dams. “Iraq is, for good reasons, focused on security and development, but unless the country acts soon, many important species will simply not be here in 10 years’ time,” said Dr. Azzam Alwash, CEO of Nature Iraq. … “In the Middle East, for example,” warned Alwash, “the Critically Endangered sociable lapwing, Vanellus gregarius, could become extinct within a human generation due to persecution and habitat loss.” Once these birds bred in large numbers on open grassland in Russia and Kazakhstan, laying three to five eggs in nests of the ground. They migrated south through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, to key wintering sites in Israel, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and northwestern India. But in 2004, BirdLife International categorized the sociable lapwing as Critically Endangered, due to a rapid population decline for reasons not well understood. The IUCN estimates a global population size of just 5,600 breeding pairs of sociable lapwings, or about 11,200 mature individuals, and projects the decline will continue. The Mesopotamian marshes grew hot and dry under the management of Saddam Hussein. After the first Gulf War ended in 1991, the regime built a series of drainage and water diversion structures that desiccated 90 percent of the world’s then third-largest wetlands to punish a political rebellion by the Marsh Arabs. “During this time average temperatures in the area rose five degrees Celsius,” said Dr. Alwash. … Dr. Michelle Stevens, assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Department of the California State University at Sacramento, wrote on her blog last year, “I have been a member of the Society of Wetland Scientists since the mid-1980s, and have worked in the wetlands field professionally since that time. The most compelling, heart breaking and inspiring project I have ever worked on is the rehydration and now desiccation of the marshes of Iraq, and the adverse impacts on both the people of the marshes and the ecosystem.” … “We believed that 20 percent of the marshes were left,” said Stevens today, “but every time I talk to someone it’s lower and lower. In the future we expect the situation to get much worse if there’s no international agreement to allocate water to the marshes.” …