Birds and wildlife in Syria

Syria is not a country set up for birdwatching: no guide network, no hides, no signs. It does hold one natural history story the world has followed, and most travellers drive the Palmyra road without knowing it. This page tells that story and sets out a few facts around it.

The bald ibis, found seventy years late

The northern bald ibis is a black bird with a bare red face and a long curved bill. It appears in Egyptian hieroglyphs, so it has been recognised for 4500 years. In Syria it was written off long ago; the species was taken to have died out in the country more than seventy years earlier.

In the spring of 2002 a biodiversity survey worked through the Badia using what Bedouin herders and local hunters knew. The finding was that the bird had never gone. 15 old nesting sites were located, and one of them, near Palmyra, still held a small breeding colony. The whole colony was seven birds.

Where the bird goes

In 2006 some 13 birds were fitted with satellite tags and the migration route was seen for the first time. The adults wintered in the Ethiopian highlands, where the species had not been recorded for close to thirty years. The route ran down through Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The tracking also showed the problem: the young were not reaching the wintering ground. Electrocution on power lines and uncontrolled hunting along the flyway came out as the main causes. The colony was laying eggs, but the generation was not being replaced.

How briefly the protection lasted

Between 2002 and 2004 a community-based protection programme was set up at Palmyra and rangers were trained. Between 2008 and 2009 an international project drew the boundaries of a protected area in the desert. In 2010 three captive-bred chicks were released into the colony and followed a migrating adult more than 1000 kilometres from Palmyra into south-western Saudi Arabia.

The work stopped in March 2011. The rangers trained at Palmyra are reported to have gone on protecting the breeding birds in the years that followed. The last year a lone bird was seen returning to Palmyra is 2014. After long delays over access and permits, the colony found in 2002 may be considered functionally extinct as of 2025.

This page carries the story to that point because the ending is documented. There is no bird for a traveller to see at Palmyra. What there is, is the place where the last eastern colony of a species stood.

A country on a flyway

Syria lies under the great migration corridor between Europe and Africa. Storks, cranes, herons, waders and raptors cross it in spring and autumn, and the seasonal salt pans of the Badia serve as stopping points. Passage concentrates in two windows: March into April, and September into October.

No equipment is needed, but expectations should be set correctly. There is no birding infrastructure. What you see is what shows from the roadside, the lake shore and the edge of a field.

Sabkhat al-Jabbul

Some 40 kilometres south-east of Aleppo, near al-Safira. It is the largest natural lake in the country, with salt flats around it. The reserve is on the Ramsar list and is a refuge for migratory birds; more than fifty salt-tolerant plant species grow on its shores, the highest count of any Syrian salt pan.

The lake is seasonal: it spreads in spring, draws back at the end of summer, and its eastern end is worked for salt. Anyone wanting to visit should ask locally about the road and about permission. The site has not been opened up for tourism.

The mammals of the Badia

The Badia once carried gazelle, cheetah, onager and ostrich. The larger of these are locally extinct. What is ordinary now is small rodents and the things that hunt them: snakes, scorpions, camel spiders, foxes.

Talila, 27 kilometres south-east of Palmyra, was set up to reverse that. It was declared in 1991, a breeding programme began in 1996 with eight Arabian oryx given by Jordan, and 257 bird species have been recorded on the site. Its present condition should be checked locally.

The hamster that came out of Aleppo

Every domestic golden hamster in the world comes from northern Syria. The animal was first described in the second edition of an 18th century natural history of Aleppo, and was recognised as a separate species in 1839. In 1930 a zoologist caught a female with her litter near Aleppo.

Mitochondrial DNA work indicates that the golden hamsters now in laboratories and homes descend from a single female, most likely the one taken in 1930. Nobody tells you this in the Aleppo souq, but it is true.

What a traveller can do

Not much, though not nothing. Do not flush birds or mammals, do not drive down to a lake shore, do not climb cliffs in the nesting season. And do not buy live animals or animal products.

One thing more: record what you see. Regular bird counts have not been possible in Syria for years, and even a traveller’s photograph is data. If you are not sure what it was, do not name it; note the date and the place. The name can be added later.