good bird sites in the less well-known countries in the region, especially 
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, to please contact me at the address below; 
any such data would greatly enhance the project's value and effectiveness 
in promoting nature conservation in the Middle East in the future. ICBP, 
32 Cambridge Road, Girton, Cambridge CBS OPJ, U.K. Tel (0223) 277318 
Fax (0223) 277200. 
The IWRB/AWB wetlands and 
waterfowl conference in Pakistan 
Mike Evans 
"Strategies to conserve wetlands and waterfowl in South and West 
Asia": this was the theme of a six-day conference held in Karachi in 
December last year which I attended as coordinator of the ICBP/OSME 
project Important Bird Areas in the Middle East. Activities centred 
around finding ways to minimise the loss and degradation of wetlands, 
their functions and biodiversity in South and West Asia. Apart from the 
plenary sessions, smaller groups met to discuss four topics: (1 ) The plight 
of the Siberian White Crane; (2) Threatened waterfowl species in the 
region; (3) The annual, mid-winter Asian Waterfowl Census; and (4) The 
Ramsar Convention in the region. 
The definition of West Asia included the Middle East, and there were a 
total of 10 delegates attending from Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the 
Yemen and Jordan. There were some very interesting talks on the Middle 
East. SA Motabelli-Pour, of the Department of Environment in Iran, 
outlined the National Wetland Inventory that the Department is carrying 
out; having finished the 12-month preparatory phase, the next 28-month 
phase has now begun, whereby information is being compiled for each 
site on plants, animals (including birds, but down to the invertebrate 
level too, e.g. snails), climate, geology, socio-economic conditions and so 
on, for eventual publication (the final two-month phase). 
Other interesting news from Iran was that the Shadegan Marshes in the 
southwest had suffered from chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war, 
but were now recovering (10 days before the conference, 2,500 Marbled 
Teal had been counted at this site). A Gulf War Pollution Project last year, 
in cooperation with a Japanese team, found that Iran had generally 
suffered little from pollution due to the Gulf War; the impact of the 
previous war had been much greater. 
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