Researchers have found in Afghanistan the first known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, which was dubbed in 2007 as “the world's least known bird species”. Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Sweden's Gothenburg University said they had found the breeding area in the remote and rugged Wakhan Corridor of north-eastern Afghanistan that has escaped the worst effects of war. The first specimen of the large-billed reed warbler was discovered in India in 1867 but the second find was not until 2006 in Thailand. The Wakhan Corridor has escaped the worst effects of the long years of war suffered elsewhere in Afghanistan since the December 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. The corridor, populated primarily by Wakhi farmers and yurt-dwelling Kyrghyz herders, is also home to snow leopards and wild Marco Polo sheep.
