Iraq, for many of us, is an unimaginable place. Our experience of it is through the far end of a CNN camera: a desert across which camouflaged Humvees race between crumbling and bombed-out cities. There is, unfortunately, all that. But Iraq, like everywhere else, has its own particulars of ecology: [1] the alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, the marshlands of the south, the northern highlands and mountains near the Turkish border.
When Sergeant Jonathan Trouern-Trend arrived in Iraq in March 2004 for active duty with the Connecticut National Guard, the country's dual nature became immediately clear. While stopped to repair a flat on the convoy into Iraq from Kuwait, Trouern-Trend noticed two things: an Iraqi in a pickup speeding toward the convoy, and "a pair of crested larks not even 10 feet from me, with the male displaying and dancing around."
That last bit is from Trouern-Trend's birdwatching blog, Birding Babylon, that he kept while on his yearlong tour in Iraq, recording everything from the black-headed gulls constantly circling the dump at Camp Anaconda to the pied kingfishers and bulbuls that frequent the lakes near Baghdad.
"A few days ago I got to go down to the Tigris River to help take water samples," reads a characteristic entry, this one from May 2005. "The dirt road down to the river passed by some clay banks. There were holes which I assume were made by all the Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters that were flying around. . . A small, spry bird emerged out of the reeds next to me and hopped around on a log. It was plain colored with a rufous tail that it held upright like a wren. . . a Rufous Bush-robin."
Recently, a book of observations culled from the blog and also titled Birding Babylon was published by the Sierra Club, and Trouern-Trend is using his little bit of limelight to emphasize environmental issues in Iraq.
He told the New Yorker that he "is hoping that his blog will heighten environmental awareness among Iraqis, especially in the fragile ecology of the Tigris meadows," and much of his interview with Grist centers on the environmentalist potential in Iraq: "I try to think about what could be in Iraq in the future. . . If people can think about the environment, it's an important step in civil society. They've gone beyond 'What are my immediate needs?' to 'What's going to happen in the future?'"
Trouern-Trend has also started the Iraq Fauna wiki, an online clearinghouse of Iraqi flora and fauna information, and namechecks enviro groups like Edenagain.org, an NGO working to restore the marshlands in southern Iraq - currently dammed and drained almost out of existence.
"How many people know that there are striped hyenas running around Iraq?" Trouern-Trend told Grist. "People don't realize that there is some wildness there."
Photo credit: Birding Babylon