This Secondary Area is determined by the range of Syrian Serin Serinus syriacus, which breeds in semi-arid Mediterranean woodland of cedar Cedrus and juniper Juniperus in the Anti-Lebanon mountains of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, and in the Sharrah highlands of Jordan. The greater part of its known breeding population lies within the Dana Nature Reserve in Jordan, which is an Important Bird Area (Evans 1994). During the winter it disperses to lower areas from south-east Turkey and north-west Iraq, south to Sinai. Remaining forest represents barely 5% of the original cover of this region as a result of centuries of clearance for agriculture and overexploitation for timber, and these same processes remain a threat to the forest which is left (WWF/IUCN 1994).

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Endemic Bird Area factsheet: Levantine mountains. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/eba/factsheet/366 on 22/11/2024.