A Provisional Checklist of the Birds of Iraq RF Porter, M Salim, K Ararat and O Fadhel on behalf of Nature Iraq

Porter, Richard; Ararat, Korsh; Fadhil Abdulrahman, Omar; Salim, Mudhafar

	A Provisional Checklist of the Birds of Iraq RF Porter, M Salim, K Ararat and O Fadhel on behalf of Nature Iraq
Marsh Bulletin
Article 1, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 56-95 PDF (0 K)
Authors
Richard Porter; Korsh Ararat; Omar Fadhil Abdulrahman; Mudhafar Salim
Abstract
This is a provisional checklist of the birds recorded in Iraq up to December 2009. It is based on an extensive review of the ornithological literature and the results of five years of surveys throughout the country by Nature Iraq, an Iraqi non-governmental, environmental organization, working in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Environment. During the last century many of the ornithological advances were made by non-Iraqis visiting the country for relatively short periods. The main exception to this was Bashir Allouse, whose classics Avifauna of Iraq was published in 1953 and Birds of Iraq in Arabic in 1963. From the late 1970s few bird surveys were made until Nature Iraq started its Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) programme in 2005 with the goal of identifying those sites that are important in Iraq for their biological diversity. Originally based upon the criteria for Important Bird Areas (IBA) developed by BirdLife International (Evans 1994) the KBA project has been expanded to survey a wide range of biodiversity, but its core strength has focused on birds. These systematic surveys, the first of their kind in Iraq, have been conducted in summer and winter in three main regions of the country: the Mesopotamian Marshlands and coastal habitats of southern Iraq (2005-2009), the lakes, steppes, the woodlands and mountains of Kurdistan (2007-2009), and desert region of central and western Iraq (2009) The provisional checklist uses the taxonomic order, English names and scientific names now adopted by the Ornithological Society of the Middle East (see www.osme.org) and the forthcoming Birds of the Middle East (Porter and Aspinall, in prep). The sources for the preparation of the Iraq status are given under ‘Primary reference source and notes’. Little attempt has been made at this stage to include subspecies, though this will be an important action for future revisions. Furthermore with ever-evolving taxonomy we have been careful not to call this a species checklist. Whilst essentially that is what it is we are aware that it includes taxa where the subspecies of a ‘parent species’ has been recorded (e.g. Eastern Greylag Goose and Baltic Gull) or where there is continuing discussion on the merits of giving a taxa full species status (e.g. Turkestan and Daurian Shrike or Hooded Crow and Mesopotamian Crow). Therefore this provisional checklist should not be regarded as a taxonomic authority. Importantly, for completeness, two appendices are included with information on species that have not been included in the checklist. Appendix A lists species that have been cited in the ornithological literature for Iraq but are no longer considered acceptable without substantiation. Appendix B includes species that have been mentioned in publications but for which we have been unable to find any evidence of their origin; we have therefore concluded that they have probably been reported erroneously

Statistics Article View: 150 PDF Download: 100