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Falconry festival ends in Abu Dhabi after three years

The festival and falconry conference were revived in 2011, after falconry was recognised by Unesco as a world intangible cultural heritage.

Anamar Agar from Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most elderly falconers. -Supplied photo

Anamar Agar emerged as one of the most popular figures at the third International Falconry Festival that ended on Saturday evening. In his heavy woolly hat and traditional attire from his native Turkmenistan, 88-year-old Agar is one of the world’s most elderly falconers.

“Back home I have a saker falcon and I still go hunting with it,” he said.

Saker is Agar’s favourite species of falcons and he is not alone in his preference. For thousands of years, Arabs too preferred — and they still do — the Saker above any other species of falcon.

“It is a very strong, powerful bird. When it goes hunting it doesn’t stop until it catches its prey, and it can hunt animals as big as a gazelle. The Saker is actually the falcon featured on the national emblem of the UAE,” explained Dr Margit Muller, director of the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital (ADFC).

Yet, the Saker remains the one falcon species still in danger of disappearing from the wild. Loss of habitat, over hunting, electrocution from electricity polls and even poison used to kill mice and rats on agricultural fields (wild Saker feeds on rodents and the poison kills them too) are some of the main reasons.

Conservation programmes, both for birds of prey and their prey were a major focus at this year’s falconry festival.

Saving habitat, sustainable hunting, opting for captive bred falcons as opposed to wild birds were some of the main messages of ADFH at the festival. The hospital celebrates both its 15th anniversary this year and 20 years since the Shaikh Zayed Falcon Release Programme was established, run nowadays by ADFH under the umbrella of Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi.

“The Falcon Release Programme started in 1995, when 107 falcons were returned to the wild. In the past 20 years, 1,600 falcons have been released,” said Dr Muller.

The programme takes in wild falcons, either donated by falconers or illegally smuggled into the country, checks their health and rehabilitates them before releasing them back into the wild, mostly in Kazakhstan or Pakistan, once every spring.

Some of the falcons are tagged with satellite tracking devices to monitor their progress. “We had a Peregrine falcon that flew a record 14,245 kilometres in seven months,” said Dr. Muller.

“They have two migration routes, one that ends up in Iran, Afghanistan region, and another here. So far, none of our released falcons has returned to the Arab Gulf, but hopefully one day.”

Organised by the Cultural Programmes and Heritage Festivals Committee - Abu Dhabi and the Emirates Falconers Club, the festival’s first edition was, in fact, in 1976, initiated by Shaikh Zayed to raise awareness and save wild falcons from extinction.

The festival and falconry conference that runs along with it, were revived in 2011, after falconry was recognised by Unesco as a world intangible cultural heritage — the result of the efforts put in by 14 nations, led by the UAE. “A lot of changes happened since 1976, on the conservation front,” said Majid Ali Al Mansouri, executive director of the Emirates Falconers Club.

“First of all, we have the houbara breeding programme, which started in the 1960s, and after many years it gave us the first 90 houbara chicks. Today, the International Fund for Houbara Conservation is releasing 46,000 Asian and African houbara every year back into the wild in UAE, Morocco and Kazakhstan,” he added.

Just as the Saker falcons, houbara too — a favourite prey for falcons — is an endangered species, largely due to urban development. The International Falconry Festival will return to Abu Dhabi in three years time.— silvia@khaleejtimes.com