19 Dutch/Belgian members of the Working Group on International Waterbird and Wetlands Research (WIWO) joined the Midwinter Waterbird Census in Iran, which took place between 9 and 28 January 2007.

The project started with a 2-day workshop in Teheran, which was attended by 70 people, mainly waterbird counters from the Department of Environment (DOE), including many from the provincial offices. Counting methods and identification of waterbirds were the two main topics. The Iranian waterbird counters were assisted by 2 members of the WIWO team in each of the 9 most important provinces in Iran. In total, 2.9 million (preliminary results!) waterbirds have been counted corresponding to 10-20% of all counted waterbirds in the mentioned provinces.
Interesting findings included the fact that 4650 Dalmatian Pelicans were counted corresponding to roughly 40% of the estimated world population; another important discovery relates to a pair of breeding Brown Fish-Owls that was located during the WIWO-DOE project in 2004 and has now disappeared, probably because gravel is being extracted from this site. A report including all final results will be prepared during the course of 2007.

The Census was carried out by the Wildlife Bureau of the Iranian Department of Environment, the Dutch/Belgian assistance was organised in cooperation with WIWO, with assistance from SOVON (Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology) and with funding from OSME (Ornithological Society of the Middle East), AEWA and other partners.