Gulf Wars, have suddenly been completed in the last one-and-a-half 
years and are now very rapidly destroying the marshes. The Iraqi 
government says the schemes are for agricultural improvement, but they 
are widely viewed in the West as an attempt to destroy the refuge that the 
marshes represent to the independent, indigenous Ma'dan or 'Marsh 
Arab' people and to groups opposing the government. Virtually the 
entire River Eupharates has been diverted away from the marshes into 
a huge man-made canal, the 'Third River', which discharges directly into 
the Gulf. Together with other major canalisation and drainage projects 
associated with the River Tigris (Anfal 3 canal, etc), and the building of 
high embankments along both rivers, these measures are said to have 
prevented water from entering up to two-thirds of the marshes during 
1992/1993, and satellite images show large areas drying up. In spring 
1993, it was reported that dykes were being built to split the marshes into 
compartments and so encourage the drying process further. By summer 
1993, reports indicated that the whole of the Central Marshes, between 
the two rivers, was dry. 
The drainage of marshes for agricultural land and the increasing utilisation 
of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates for irrigation in Turkey, 
Syria and northern and central Iraq have already caused considerable 
loss of wetland habitat in lower Iraq. It seems likely that the current 
drainage of the main permanent freshwater lakes and reedbeds of the 
marshlands will go ahead towards completion. An independent study 
of the likely environmental impact is currently being undertaken by the 
wetland Ecosystems Research Group of the University of Exeter (UK): so 
far, the evidence indicates that the drainage of the marshes will constitute 
an ecological catastrophe of unprecedented proportions in western 
Eurasia in recent times. 
Further information on the human and environmental situation in the marshlands 
of southern Iraq can be obtained by writing to: The AMAR Appeal, c/o Emma 
Nicholson MP, House of Commons, London, SW1 OAA, UK. 
Mike Evans, BirdLife International, Wellbrook Court, Girton Road, Cambridge 
CB3 ON A, UK. 
Crop Contents of a Spotted 
Sandgrouse 
Hew D V Prendergast 
This note reports on the crop contents, mostly seeds, of a Spotted 
Sandgrouse Pterocles senegallus shot between 07.30 and 08.30hrs on 9 
April 1968 at Buraimi, United Arab Emirates (24° 13' N, 55° 47' E) by Major 
W Stanford. 29 
