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ERWDA signs houbara deal

The agreement is in accordance with the directives of the President, His Highness Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan to breed more houbara in the next 10 years, in coordination with the region's states.

Majid Ali Al Mansouri, ERWDA's Secretary General and Mahmoud Mohammed Shidiwah Chairman of Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Yemen, signed the agreement at ERWDA headquarters. This agreement came under the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed between ERWDA and the ministry in February 2003.

Mansouri said the main objective of this agreement was to preserve a stock of houbara originating from Yemen in captivity at ERWDA's National Avian Research Center (NARC), in Sweihan, to prevent their extinction. The agreement also stipulates the collection of houbara eggs or chicks from Yemen within a period of five years from the signing of this agreement, where a specific captive breeding programme for these birds will be undertaken at NARC and 30 per cent of this captive production will be re-introduced back to the wild in Yemen.

Houbara bustard is a bird of the arid zone with a wide but sparse breeding range from Arabia to Mongolia, that small numbers still breed in Arabia, but larger numbers migrate to Arabia from their breeding grounds in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, China and Mongolia, and that numbers of houbara bustard have declined over the recent decades for several of reasons including hunting, poaching, agricultural intensification and land use changes, Mansouri told at a Press conference.

He added that houbara bustard is the traditional quarry of Arab falconers and therefore NARC is committed to the restoration and preservation of houbara population inside and outside the UAE.

"Yemen is holding one of the rare remnant houbara populations of the Arabian Peninsula, but as houbara hunting is still taking place in Arabia it is anticipated that the current hunting and poaching pressure might lead to extinction of houbara including the resident houbara in Yemen," Mansouri cautioned.

For his part, Shidiwah said there was a need to develop a houbara bustard conservation programme in Yemen through a set of measures including protection, preservation in captivity and captive propagation at NARC of a number of houbara individuals originating from Yemen.

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