Population of houbara bustards is increasing

The Emmirates Centre in Morocco was established in 1955 under the initiative of the UAE. The Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi, which supports houbara cocervation efforts, works closely with the Centre.

The Centre exhibited a few houbaras at the Abu Dhabi International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition recently.

The ECWP’s captive breeding programme has made tremendous progress and has already succeeded in creating a self-sustaining captive houbara population. In the long run, the Centre is committed to restoring an unlimited houbara population in the wild. Despite the tough challenges of breeding this shy bird in captivity, the Centre is currently on its way to meeting its ambitious goal of producing 5,000 birds per year by 2008. So far the number of hatchlings has increased from 429 in 2000 to 3,866 in 2006.

“The ECWP houbara breeding project is an excellent example of the UAE’s strategic efforts to integrate the three pillars of sustainable development: environmental protection, social development and economic development. We at the ECWP are very excited to have helped build this gateway to a thriving houbara population,” said Mohammad Al Bowardi, Secretary General of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Managing Director of the Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi.

The ECWP’s breeding complex is the headquarters of a vast network of specialised stations distributed over 40,000 km in Eastern Morocco. The integrated, state-of-the-art facilities use the latest scientific innovations to breed, acclimatise and reintroduce houbaras into the wild.

After releasing them, their movements are closely tracked and their behaviour is studied in their natural habitat. One of the project’s successes is that it locally grows all the food needed by the houbara population.

A second captive-breeding station was set up in 2005 with the potential to hatch an incredible 10,000 houbaras per year by 2014. The network also includes two permanent field stations in Matarka and Bouarfa with pre-release and release facilities.

To promote genetic diversity in the breeding stock, 100 wild houbara eggs were annually collected between 2001 and 2005; however, for every wild egg collected, two captive-bred birds are released in the wild.

As of 2006, the breeding population totalled 3753 birds.

Another striking success is that the number of houbaras released in the wild has climbed from two in 1998 to 2,794 in 2006. A total of 5,454 birds have been released since the beginning of the project.

Since the ECWP’s primary objective is to restore a sustainable wild houbara population, tracking the birds released so far and monitoring their behaviour in their natural habitat is crucial.

In studying a houbara’s efforts to survive, ECWP scientists monitor everything, right from weather systems to vegetation and wildlife in the release areas.