FAUNA SURVEYING OF CENTRAL SYRIAN DESERT 2000-03

During period 2000-03, Gianluca Serra served as conservation biologist a UN-FAO Italy-funded project in the central Syrian desert, aimed at assisting the Syrian Government in initiating biodiversity conservation in the country through development of the first operational protected area (Al Talila Reserve), steppe habitat rehabilitation and raising the ecological awareness locally. The FAO/DGCS Italian Cooperation project (GCP/SYR/009/ITA), based in the millenary oasis of Palmyra, has been in operation between 1996 and 2004. Duty of Dr Serra was to detect and document the key naturalistic and biodiversity assets of the central Syrian desert – through carrying out a long-term fauna reconnaissance survey – in order to develop the Al Talila Reserve in terms of scientific documentation, management and ecotourism potential.

While in-service training a team of Govt. staff, local hunters and indigenous nomads (Bedouins), a number of new and interesting fauna species were detected and discovered, like for instance:

1. ★ 1 species of beetle, new to science at global level (Coleoptera, Aphodidae) (Della Casa, in prepar.)
   

2. ★ 1 new butterfly record for Syria (Papilio demoleus: Beniamini et al. 2007)  
   

3. ★ 1 new snake record for Syria (Black Cobra Walterinnesia aegyptia: Sindaco et al. 2006)
   

4. ★ 9 globally threatened bird species and 21 potentially new bird records for Syria (Serra et al. 2005 a & b)
   

5. ★ 2 new mammal records for Syria (Ruppell’s Fox Vulpes rueppellii and Sand Cat Felis margarita: Serra et al. 2007).
   

The surveying efforts culminated in the discovery in April 2002 of a surviving relict colony of Northern Bald Ibis (NBI) Geronticus eremita (Serra 2003), quoted by BirdLife International as “arguably the most significant orthithological discovery in the last 30 years anywhere in the Middle East” (Bowden et al., 2002). The same extensive desert survey also paved the road (Murdoch and Serra 2006) to another ornithological discovery of international relevance, taken place in eastern Syria in February 2007: the long-sought staging grounds of the Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius), finally found by a Dutch-Syrian team lead by Remco Hofland (see related BirdLife International news).