Abu Dhabi's refuge for endangered species | DW Documentary

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It's home to one of the biggest contemporary
nature conservation efforts.
Sir Bani Yas — a desert island packed with wildlife.
Animals from multiple continents roam freely on the island.
Sir Bani Yas is part of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, or UAE.
The reserve was established by Shaikh Zayed Al Nayhan,
who created a kind of Noah's Ark for one of the
rarest species at the time, the Arabian oryx.
This “Island of the White Antelope” became “Abu Dhabi's Natural Oasis”.
The emirates have seen development at break-neck speed.
A dhow against the modern backdrop of Abu Dhabi symbolizes
the rapid growth from fishing settlement to booming metropolis.
The UAE is a record breaker when it comes to
the consumption of energy, resources and water.
So even in my own lifetime it got difficult to keep up with the —
with the changes that we're seeing.
You know I can point at something unique and beautiful and
enormous and tell you that this was desert five years ago.
So I can - I can't even imagine what it's like for my father or
his father before him to see where we were and what we've become.
It began in the oases of Rub al-Khali,
the largest uninterrupted sand desert in the world.
It brought the Arab Bedouin Federation of the Bani Yas to
the glass palaces of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The name Sir Bani Yas — the island of the Bani Yas —
harks back to the political union from which the
ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai came.
The first recorded mention of the
Liwa Oasis dates to the 17th century.
It's located in the part of the Rub al-Khali that borders
Saudi Arabia and now belongs to the UAE.
In the desert, water is the most precious commodity.
Only in places where there is enough water can
settlements develop and people survive.
But locating it isn't easy.
Luckily, people in the region had some outside help?
The Arabian oryx, which is, is the white one, is the best one —
best animal to find the water source in the desert,
so in the past people that would follow the tracks of oryx,
went on the wild they find the water source so maybe that could be
a reason why they choose Arabian oryx
as a national animal of the UAE.
It's no coincidence that the name Abu
Dhabi means “father of the gazelle”.
During a hunting trip in the 18th century,
a gazelle led the Liwa Oasis Bedouins to a freshwater spring.
There they established a fishing village.
According to legend, it was the dawn of a new era.
In the mid-19th century, the coastal settlement experienced
its first boom through the pearl fishery.
It exists somewhere between tradition and modernity.
The visible contradictions are proof of the
rapid changes the emirate has gone through.
Abu Dhabi has long outgrown its geographic area.
Its skyscrapers and other magnificent
buildings require a lot of space,
which is reclaimed from the sea.
The Shaikh Zayed Grand Mosque,
the city center around the Etihad Towers,
and the Qasr al Watan Presidential palace,
are statements in the global contest for influence and prestige.
Even the locals gaze on with astonishment.
The main island on which Abu Dhabi is located has more than doubled
in size over the past 50 years, thanks to land reclamation concepts.
For a long time, the race into the future knew no bounds —
until climate change began to demand otherwise.
There are many way to express luxury.
But here, one thing takes center-stage is water.
The desert's most precious commodity has become a symbol of excess.
One of Shaikh Zayed's
many achievements is free access to water,
which according to the Koran, every Muslim is entitled to.
But climate change is making the desert ever harsher.
So it makes sense to limit private water use in favor of irrigation.
When Sheik Zayed was ascended to be ruler of
Abu Dhabi he was having big vision in his mind,
which he started at from Al Ain,
which is the greening of the desert and then he moved it here in 1971,
which means he started planting trees on the island
and preparing a nice environment for the animals.
Many species of animals from different regions of
the world have found a home here.
For one particular species from the Arabian Peninsula,
the wildlife refuge was a matter of life and death.
At the time when Sir Bani Yas was established,
the Arabian oryx was one of the very endangered species,
Sheikh Zayed basically decided to allocate this island,
which is a huge island, for protection of this species.
Almost 40 years later from the establishment of this island,
today the Arabian oryx is no longer an endangered species.
For the Arabian oryx, Sir Bani Yas became a safe haven,
paving the way for an amazing comeback.
The desert is considered to be Allah's garden,
from which he removed everything that was superfluous.
But wild animals were by no means a part of that.
Sir Ban Yas island is 87 square kilometers and half of
all land is nature resort, animals free roaming inside.
There are mountains, grass patches areas
on the plantations, on the trees, yeah.
The island reserve also provides protection for eland antelopes?
Barbary sheep from North Africa?
and blackbuck antelopes during mating season.
Unlike elsewhere, the animals here don't face poaching
or other harmful human influences.
That's reflected in their relaxed demeanor.
We do have different species in the island, mostly from like Africa,
middle east asian or likely from India,
most of the animals are gifted or
donated to the Sheikh Zayed, because he used to save his own species
at the beginning and neighbor countries realize —
why don't we ask him to take our species.
It's no secret that striped hyenas and
cheetahs are severely threatened.
But it's less well-known that giraffes are also endangered.
In some countries, even gazelles have died out.
The biggest challenge is the harsh climate.
High temperatures and then humidity.
Apart from these natural challenges we have the challenges of
different species which are not from this region.
Providing them with the ecological requirements that
they need to survive here on the island.
The abilities of wild animals to learn and adapt can be studied here.
It's not only the herbivores that wait for their daily feeding?
?so do the predators.
Once in the day the truck going to pass, they drop of the food in
the feeding stations, the animals they do know
what time or when they get their food.
So, they do more on pretty much the mornings
quite active in the feeding sessions.
And water, we don't want to make a big pond,
then animals get to lay on that water,
then they need water all the time kind of.
We want animals to roam around on the island,
to look for the water from the grass patches area.
African cheetahs have been known to incorporate safari vehicles and
even airplanes into their hunting strategies.
So knowing daily feeding times is child's play.
Still, not every hunt ends in success.
All around the world, most of the conservation plans on conservation
reintroduction fail because the animals were directly taken from an
institution that is extensively taking care of the animals
and then immediately releasing them to the wild.
So, they don't survive there because they don't have the —
the skills to survive in the wild.
Sir Bani Yas is the result of extensive landscape
planning based on scientific research.
The same can be said for urban planning in Abu Dhabi.
The architecture reflects the idea of harmoniously combining the past,
present and future — following the notion of “Etihad,”
the Arabic word for community.
And the animal depicted on the UAE's emblem reflects that too.
Falcons are a big part of Emirati heritage and tradition.
And that can be seen on our crests.
And having a falcon hospital just shows you how serious we are about
protecting this heritage that goes hand in hand with the
nature that this heritage is tied to as well.
The head doctor at this unique animal clinic
is a German veterinarian.
She was awarded the highest civilian
distinction by the Crown Prince himself.
With over 11,500 falcons per year,
we're the largest falcon hospital in the world.
Falcons have a different significance here.
In Europe, falconry was the sport of kings in the Middle Ages.
It was for the aristocracy.
Here, falconry has a completely different background.
Just 40, 50, or 60 years ago, most Emiratis
were Bedouins living in the desert.
They used falcons to hunt for meat for their families.
They couldn't have survived without falcons.
The birds were never just a piece of sporting equipment.
They were integrated into the family.
Falcons had the status of a family
member, and that's still the case today.
We're not just caring for birds here.
We're caring for the children of the Bedouins.
Because that's how falcons are still seen today.
The UAE was the first Arab state to make private ownership
and trade in wild animals punishable by law.
The move was all the more significant because big cats,
in particular, were considered status symbols.
Genuine efforts to stop illegal wildlife trade,
as well as an international commitment to species conservation,
are showing clear signs of success.
We have Scimitar Horned Oryx, which was declared as extinct
in the wild in 2000 and we have around
more than a thousand individuals
herd of Scimitar Horn Oryx on the island —
we see that our success is very good for captive breeding
and preparing a population for future reintroductions.
The environment agency of Abu Dhabi they took up a project of
reintroducing them in wilding Chad by contributing a breeding herd.
The project is basically going very
successful and they have been able to
revert the status from extinct to critically endangered.
So, it's a big success story.
The repopulation in Chad shows that Sir Bani Yas is much more than
a safari park where peacocks walk side-by-side with cheetahs.
The scimitar oryx — not to be confused with the Arabian oryx —
was once widespread throughout the Sahara.
It was later eradicated from its last refuge, in Chad.
There still seems to be little concern among people that up to
a million species are on the brink of extinction.
They include the East African or Beisa oryx,
one of four species of oryx on Sir Bani Yas.
Here on the island we have multiple species and we have species that
can interbreed and we don't want hybrid so we have separated them
in different zones and then we have some
enclosures that have different sexes,
because we need to control the population,
to maintain quality rather than going for the quantity.
Sir Bani Yas is now home to some 16,000 wild animals.
The reserve's management cooperates closely with
international conservation organizations.
That's one of the reasons why the successes and setbacks experienced
here provide valuable information for
wildlife parks around the world.
That also applies to the elaborate system of hoses used for irrigation.
We aim to have a genetically viable population that is not the victim of
gene deficiency and we are
processing this strategy through blood line
exchange and then we are doing some rewilding projects where we start
modifying the behavior of animals.
The white antelopes don't actually need any
fencing to protect them from the cheetahs.
The purpose of the fences is to separate an
older pair of brothers from their own offspring.
Otherwise there would be fights over territory and prey.
The Oryx have no reason to fear the cheetahs.
Nor does the ranger, who accompanies them on their daily hunt for food.
It's his job to observe whether they catch prey and get enough to eat.
The older they get, the more difficult hunting becomes.
Peacocks and cheetahs once shared the same habitat —
until cheetahs became victims of human activity in Asia.
Not only were they hunted
excessively for their beautiful coats;
they were also captured and trained to hunt.
The pair of brothers on Sir Bani Yas came from a zoo.
They had no experience with either peacocks or giraffes.
After some training from humans, they learned to hunt.
They've now been self-sufficient for nearly a decade.
Our three cheetahs at the present, they can't really make —
control the number of animals but it can make a difference,
so cheetahs can keep our animals in natural fear.
Cheetahs -- and probably striped hyenas as well —
are extinct on the Arabian Peninsula.
Giraffes and Beisa oryx face a similar fate in
some of their native African habitats.
We take animals from captive bred
institutions, we bring them on the island.
And then we raise them, once they are
adapted to the climate on the island.
We start rewilding we start stepping back and we provide more of a
natural habitat to them,so that they
can learn how to survive in the wild.
Whereas peacocks have multiplied,
it's been difficult to find suitable
females so the cheetahs can reproduce.
Even though there's room for improvement,
the successful reintroduction of animals into the wild is the kind of
high-profile success that means a lot to the Emirates.
With sufficient capital, it can be easier to create
artificial habitats than to preserve natural ones.
The oil boom catapulted the Emirates to being
one of the world's most dynamic economies.
In just five decades, black gold created ostentatious wealth —
and steadily increasing CO2 emissions.
Despite all the similarities, there are also differences between
the seven emirates that make up the UAE.
Sharjah, for example, aims to differentiate itself from Dubai.
Skyscrapers dominate the cityscape here too.
But instead of chasing records, the focus
here is on preserving cultural identity.
This can be seen in the costly renovation of entire districts.
For that, Sharjah was named
“Cultural Capital of the Arab World” by UNESCO.
Heritage sites have been restored and can once again be admired,
like these historic wind towers.
Alcohol is prohibited here.
The focus is on Islamic cultural heritage and individual tourism.
That's helped it become more resilient against
global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
And it reduces resource consumption.
The advent of tourism on Sir Bani Yas came just a few years ago.
Before that it was exclusively a nature reserve.
It doesn't rely on income from tourism,
so a drop in visitors isn't an existential
threat, like with other wildlife parks.
Guests can enjoy really being in a hotel
in the middle of nature and animals.
We have a Desert Island Resort and Spa
that has a historical background;
it was the guest house of Sheik Zayed,the
late ruler of United Arab Emirates,
that was converted afterwards to a hotel.
The desert island is located eight kilometers off
the mainland of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
It's 180 kilometers from the capital.
Due to the low number of visitors, the animals are hardly disturbed.
So it's possible to observe them close up, without startling them.
The Arabian oryx's calm behavior is a
clear indication of the lack of threat.
In places where they are hunted,
wild animals demonstrate a fear of humans by fleeing immediately.
Despite being an island, Sir Bani Yas
is part of the desert tourism industry,
which often uses motifs from the “1001 Nights” folk tales.
Ecotourism is still a relatively new concept in the UAE.
Until now, the focus has been on the kinds of
services that often contribute to global climate change.
But guidelines for “green hotels” and a system for awarding
environmental prizes in the tourism sector aim to change that.
There are hopes that “sustainability”
will become more than
just a buzzword, and will be properly assessed.
We try to work with the different stakeholders,
including hotels for example to have certain programs in place to
reduce their water wastage, their recycling capabilities.
We even have a specific licensing process for how
environmentally sound their practices are on the ground.
A camel ride gives a glimpse into the world of the Bedouins.
Traditionally, their lives were determined by water and the desert.
The absence of one, and the omnipresence of the other.
The infinite desert and finite water
supplies were like two sides of a coin,
that together created high risk. That's still the case today.
The desert's underground water reserves
may only last another half-century.
In 1960, Abu Dhabi's first
desalination plant went into operation.
Its processing capacity was 50 cubic meters of water per day.
Now, a new plant is under construction,
with a capacity 18,000 times greater.
Processing enough water to fill 360 Olympic-sized swimming pools,
it's set to be the world's biggest.
It's a sign of how much economic development and
population growth the nation has seen.
Over the same time period,
the population of the emirate of Abu Dhabi
has grown from 25,000 to over three million.
About half of the inhabitants live
in the capital city of the same name.
One of the most lovely experiences that
you can have here is escape from
the hustle and bustle of city life and from work life and when
you come here you can really switch off.
I've worked and lived in so many different
places, in Asia, in Africa, Europe,
in Middle East now, and you feel like you come into this beautiful
sanctuary and you have experiences that you will not have
anywhere else. It's like a fairytale.
It's less of a fairytale for the cheetahs on
the lookout for food in this picnic area.
The wild cats are especially good at
hunting sand gazelles and chital deer.
They pay no mind to the tourists riding by.
In fact, it might provide a useful distraction for their prey.
But, it seems they'll still have to wait a while for their dinner.
The tourists have it much easier when it comes to that.
An opulent Arabian buffet awaits them every evening.
They can also choose from a
selection of specialties from farther afield,
such as Indian Mughlai cuisine or South African braai.
Tourism is an international business,
and when it comes to the workforce,
the UAE is especially global. Almost all of the Emiratis here are guests.
The staff are from all over the world.
We've got a total of 250 employees and
they are from the five continents.
We are covering every continent in the world
and it's a total of 34 nationalities.
So you can imagine having all these
nationalities with different backgrounds,
different mindsets, different cultures, working in one area,
in one unit, in one environment,
with no problems, everybody respects the
culture of his colleagues, the culture of others.
The UAE officially declared 2019 the “year of tolerance”.
It wasn't long before the slogan was
put to the test. The “Abraham Accords”
with Israel are controversial in the Arab world,
in part because the agreement is being co-opted by others.
But the symbolism of Abraham or Ibrahim is clear.
A call to focus on what unites the groups,
rather than what divides them.
On Sir Bani Yas, the “Arabian Night” is a small step in that direction.
A sustainable future demands another difficult reconciliation —
one between economy and ecology.
Here, slogans certainly won't be enough.
Achieving climate neutrality is a far more difficult undertaking than
erecting the world's tallest building,
especially in a place where
energy demands are met by burning fossil fuels.
The climate crisis is taking its toll on the region
through rising temperatures and sea levels.
While cities are at risk of sinking into the sea,
entire stretches of land are drying up even more.
With temperatures well over 40 degrees Celsius in the summer,
air conditioning consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels.
So does the extraction of drinking and
industrial water through desalination.
Another result of desalination is higher
salt concentrations in coastal waters,
affecting coral reefs and marine fauna.
These must be drastically reduced.
It's not only the UEA that needs to solve this problem.
Worldwide, over 140 million cubic meters of brine are
released into the environment every day.
A switch to ecotourism could bring relief.
Places like Sir Bani Yas are a positive sign.
Always, to me, ecotourism highlights the
conservation efforts and if you see the
economical perspective of eco-tourism,
if it's in a sustainable manner
it also supports financially the project for conservation.
Preserving and improving the environment
are no easy tasks in desert regions.
The objectives are complex, and often conflicting.
It's hoped that reclaiming desert through reforestation will have a
positive impact on the local climate while combatting global warming.
Every day, around 30 tons of feed are brought in
for the animals, to spare the local vegetation.
And the three million trees planted on Sir Bani Yas need a lot of water?
We getting the water from the mainland underwater
sea pipeline from the desalination plant, from the main land.
It's about of nine kilometers distance, we getting water here,
storing it on the tank, same time irrigate.
The investments might pay off in the long run.
In the UAE, environmental policy is based on scientific data,
and Sir Bani Yas is a living, breathing research center.
So we at the Department of Culture and Tourism try to help,
promote the protection of our environment,
whether it's in the sea or on the land.
And we do have several initiatives to conserve our wildlife but also
have a sustainable ecosystem for this life to thrive in.
Ever since Shaikh Zayed established the wildlife reserve in 1977,
ecologists and wildlife biologists have been working to improve it.
Their experiences provide valuable insights about nature preservation
and climate protection in desert environments.
The land here called salt dome or salt valley, so full of salt in here
and other minerals, like gypsum, dehamotides, magnesium, kind of,
so we need the animals poop here to fertilize the soil.
So, if the animals near by the grass
patches areas, where irrigation times,
that water, it helps the area to fertilize.
So, year by year the sand getting fertilized better,
so we need less water, the trees or the grass to grow naturally.
Providing wild animals with enough living space is
an effective means of climate protection.
For one thing, it means putting a halt to mining in an area.
And it also preserves natural resources,
like these dry valleys, known as “wadis” in Arabic.
Mining happened in the past, Sheikh Zayed is
the one who's stopped mining in the island.
And the best thing he done,
he didn't expose to the world much about minerals in his land,
so he know that if the next generation, they know,
they might start looking for minerals.
Then they might destroy what are we have done in the nature.
Increasingly, major efforts are being made to reduce emissions of
CO2 and other greenhouse gases, to prepare this
oil-and-gas-reliant economy for a future without fossil fuels.
In a nutshell, climate change and environmental challenges are
viewed very seriously in the UAE because it touches
the people day to day activities.
People recognize the harsh environment we live in,
but also the urgency to take actions on these issues.
In a country of wonders, where marble palaces and
white mosques rise from the desert sand,
it's also a wonder that the Arabian oryx was saved from extinction.
Its rescue on the desert island of Sir Bani Yas was a historic success.
And other species are thriving here too.
Even the two cheetahs have finally landed some prey.
The return of the “white antelope” marked the first time that a
species once again flourished after having gone extinct in the wild.
They are the national animal of UAE.
If you take our 50 dirhams note, this is the Arabian oryx.
As a national animal.
So a lot of the things that you see happening on the ground today
derive from the vision of our founding
father, the late Sheikh Zayed al Nayhan.
It was actually his private reserve that was
turned into the Sir Bani Yas, as we see it now.
He understood the criticality of the species
that were being hunted out in the wild.
The story of an island being dedicated
to the antelope is more than
just a parable for Abu Dhabi, the so-called “father of the gazelle”.
It's also a step towards coexistence between animals and humans,
and a better planet for all living creatures.