The scimitar-horned oryx has been brought back from extinction in the wilds of Chad thanks to the late Sheikh Zayed and the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency.
Repopulating the oryx, believed to have been poached to extinction in the wild 25 years ago, was one of the conservation passions of the UAE’s Founding Father.
As part of EAD’s reintroduction programme, 25 oryx bred in captivity in the UAE were released in the central African country and are being monitored by the Sahara Conservation Fund to see how they adapt to life in the wild.
The project will build a self-sustaining population by releasing between 300 and 500 oryx over the next five years.
The International Union of the Conservation of Nature listed the scimitar-horned oryx as extinct in the wild in 2000, although they are believed to have disappeared 10 years befor that.
Since then, the animal, which naturally roams the sub-Saharan grasslands of Africa, from Senegal to Sudan, existed only in private collections.
One such collection was Sheikh Zayed’s oryx herd, which he decreed be protected in a wildlife reserve during his rule.
EAD’s task was to help transfer the oryx population, which today numbers 3,000 specimens, back to their endemic habitat.
However, animal breeds kept in captivity suffer from low diversity in the gene pool as a result of generational inbreeding.
Before EAD could consider reintroducing these oryx into the wild, they had to engineer what the organisation refers to as a "world herd".
To help make the genetic pool more robust, animals from scimitar-horned oryx herds from around the world were brought to the UAE to breed. As a result, the released animals come from EAD’s world herd of oryx, including animals from the US, Europe and the UAE.
Along with the Zoological Society of London, the teams fitted the 25 animals with GPS collars.
The data collected will help reintroduction programmes around the world.
The animals have been in Chad since March, but were kept in pens to monitor their acclimatisation and adaptation to the Sahelian grassland before being released into the 77,000-square-kilometre reserve.
Initial reports show a group of 19 animals have ranged more than 30km from the release site, to an area green with vegetation and water. They are alert, healthy, calm and acclimatising to their new surroundings. (The National)