A will for nature

Dr Christopher Toureng speaks about his love of the desert and his long-term plans to educate people to enjoy and conserve the natural beauty of Wadi Wuraya.

I was born in the picturesque region of South France to a Swiss mother and a French father. In Switzerland, Germany and France we were taught to respect nature. Both my parents inculcated a deep love for nature in me. My father was a fisherman, a hunter and a keen environmentalist.

He would often take us out for adventures. Since we were young we were encouraged to spend time outdoors and live in harmony with nature in the countryside.
I remember always being outdoors
as a kid, hanging from trees and looking for some adventure in nature. As a child I was taught to be curious about the world around me.

I

I love archaeology. This was one part of the outdoors that always fascinated me – old monuments which have a history to narrate. I loved stories about the pyramids and Egyptian mummies. These stories drew me more towards nature and heritage. As I grew up, I began volunteering for work with environment-related NGOs and eventually graduated with a PhD from Toulouse in France.

I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the desert. The desert changes you forever. As part of my PhD research, I lived
in the wetlands of Camargue for seven years. I was then invited to conduct research on the houbara bustard in Abu Dhabi. As a teenager I had read many accounts of the desert by Sir Wilfred Thesiger.

I'd also enjoyed the adventures in Yemen and Djibouti
in the early 20th century by the French writer, Andre De MontFreids. The desert just fascinated me.

Coming here was a bit of a culture shock for me in more ways than one. A French writer I once read said that once you meet the desert, you cannot be the same. When you go deep into the desert and stand in the middle of nowhere with the sand blanket around you, the stillness and completeness of the scene moves you beyond words and changes you forever.

I find the civilisation of places like Yemen and Oman very rich. The people's hospitality touches you. I have stopped by in homes along the way and people have welcomed me with so much warmth, sharing whatever they had with me. It is a wonderful connection.

I am aggrieved by people's cavalier attitude to the environment. I feel really sad to see the environment been taken so much for granted. Last year a few hard facts about the environment were driven home by the movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

It compelled us to take a serious look at what we were doing to our planet. What worries me is how people just look at profits without thinking of the long-term destruction they are causing. We are destroying so much for our future generations.

I think people are taking less and less time to enjoy life these days. Everyone is rushing around and people are getting to be increasingly intolerant. All of us lose patience so quickly.
I am managing the Wadi Wurayah project, creating a protected area in the mountain of Fujairah in partnership with the Fujairah municipality. The project is sponsored by HSBC.

"Al Waraa" refers to water reeds in Arabic, from which the name Wadi Wurayah is derived. The wadi lies in Shimayliyyah Mountains within the broader Hajar Mountain range.

Its 129 kilometre-squared catchment area occupies the northern reaches of Fujairah between the towns of Masafi, Khor Fakkan and Bidiyah. Because of permanent water availability, it has been used by local communities for thousands of years. Today, its natural beauty has made Wadi Wurayah a popular tourist destination. Its ecological value led to its inclusion in WWF's Global 200, the richest, rarest and most distinctive of the earth's natural habitats.

This project was launched in 2005 to assess the importance of Wadi Wurayah for nature conservation and to establish a Protected Area. In the following year, His Highness Shaikh Hamad Bin Mohammad Al Sharqi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Fujairah, gave his support to officially declare Wadi Wurayah as the UAE's first protected mountain area. We are currently waiting to obtain the official decree from the Diwan of the Royal Court of Fujairah that will secure and protect this area.

My goal is to conserve and protect fresh water sources and natural resources. Wadi Wurayah is the only place in the UAE with fresh water. Springs in different branches of the Wadi and a network of streams, pools and cascades make the area fertile, rich with flora and fauna.

It has been inhabited by people for centuries. There are old Bedu settlements and people from the mountains roam with their goats during the summer. There are date plantations and along the coastline fishing thrives. But since the 1980s, most have left the place save for the Bidiya tribe. The wadi continues to be a tourist destination. I try to see to it that while tourists keep coming to the place, they do not degrade the environment.

There is so much work to do here. We plan to have local guides to show unique practices such as honey collection.
The wadi has a small, rare bee with a tiny honeycomb built in the trees high in the Hajar Mountains. This honey is very rare. We also recently concluded a project on the ghaf tree.

I think we need to consider our eco footprint. Since last year I have been collaborating with the Ministry of Environment and been busy collecting data on the eco footprint of the UAE. We are working with the Global Footprint Network.

The 2006 Ecological Footprint of the UAE was recorded to be 11.8 global hectares per capita. In other words, each resident in the UAE lives as if there were seven planets available to support his/her lifestyle.

The Global Footprint Network, in its 2006 Living Planet Report, calculates keeping in mind the available global biocapacity, and states that there are 1.8 global
hectares available per capita. The next Living Planet Report that is to be released in October is set to state that the 1.8 global hectares have been reduced to 1.7 global hectares per capita.

The urgency for the UAE to address its consumption pattern lies not just in dropping from its Ecological Footprint lead rank but in being able to first, determine with certainty the reality of the UAE Footprint and more important, understand the sustainability of such a lifestyle. In doing so, we can plan a proactive approach in tackling the imminent issues arising from present consumption patterns.

The Ministry of Environment and Water of the UAE, the Abu
Dhabi Global Environment Data Initiative of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi and the Emirates Wildlife Society (housing the WWF-UAE project office) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Global Footprint Network in May 2007 to resolve this issue in a working partnership.

I try to practise what I preach. I live in a small village in Fujairah and try to practise sustainable living. I recycle
all paper, plastics and I grow my own vegetables such as tomatoes and aromatic herbs such as rosemary, thyme and basil. I consciously try to reduce my garbage each day.

I admire people who devote their life families to a cause. People like Aung San Syu Ki, Gandhi, whose lives stand for something. In everyday life, I appreciate people who work with students with special needs in hospitals. My sister is one of them. She works with special needs children and I think it is a very demanding job. I don't know how she does it.

I hate superficiality in people.

Me

Me and my passions

I am really fond of the outdoors and reading. I take my books along with me on camping trips. I love to read travelogues and books on heritage, one of my favourite authors being Henry de Montfreid who wrote this interesting book called Secrets of the Red Sea.

I love history and another book that I recently concluded was Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah by Tim ackintosh-Smith. I am trying to find the same places that this ancient traveller visited.

I also love thrillers and am a fan of Donna Leon, author of crime novels set in Venice, Italy. I also enjoy works by Finnish author Arto Paasilinna.

I always have a book by Herman Hesse – a German writer – at my bedside.

Me and my routine

What I love about my job is that there is no typical day in my life. I usually work from home and I am completely official when I need to be. On some days I travel to the Fujairah Municipality or sometimes I go into the wadi in the early hours of the morning. There is always something to discover in the wadi, some new dragonfly, a new orchid or a new insect. I am working with an entomologist who is currently working on an encyclopaedia of anthropods of the UAE. It is exciting and no two days are alike.

Me and my dreams

I always dream of a better world. I have this dream of going on an Enfield bike from India to Europe. I aspire for missions that raise awareness. I have a Swiss-German friend who has been on a mission for the last 17 years to recover anchors lost at sea.

I would love to visit places around the world that have
historical and heritage significance such as Samarkand.

Myself

What should ordinary people do in their everyday lives to reduce their eco footprint?
Ecological conservation is not a highbrow issue to be discussed exclusively at seminars. People have to introduce small meaningful conservation in their everyday lives to make a difference to this world.

People need to be very careful about water consumption. In Australia, for instance, people rinse their dirty plates in a bucket full of water instead of a running tap and use sprinklers to water their garden.

People need to reduce energy consumption: switch off lights when they don't need them, programme their airconditioner only to function when they are around. We need to have public awareness campaigns so that people are made aware of conservation-friendly practices in response to these issues.

The UAE is a young and developing country and is in its infancy. I try to visualise how France was after 30 years of existence. It is amazing to see how much the UAE has achieved in these 30 years. I would like to see the environment integrated as part of the decision-making process in the development.

The important thing is to start working on this from the very beginning. Schools are a good place to start where we can have enviro-spellathon programmes and bring nature into the school curriculum at very early stages. Pupils respond well to this.

How do we save coral reefs and the marine flora and fauna?
Since 1978 there has been over-fishing in the waters around this region as the population has been steadily increasing. The Abu Dhabi government has created protected areas to conserve fish and has also taken measures to discourage the use of fishing gear like gargours. We need strong legislation to enforce these sustainable practices.

You have been involved with the Wadi Wurayah project for over two years.

Tell us more about the place.
The climate of Wadi Wurayah is characteristic of a hot, hyper-arid mountain desert. However, it is influenced by rainfall linked with global climate events. The rainfall provides Wadi Wurayah with a unique hydro-geological system that allows run-off water to emerge as springs between impermeable and permeable rock layers.

All nine different freshwater habitat types are found here, ranging from riffle and stream to waterfall, that are spring-fed with water flows alternating between underground and surface.

The wadi also has unique flora. There are a total of over 100 species.

A mammal census recorded 10 species of which 6 are considered endangered by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The most emblematic species is the Arabian tahr, endemic to the Hajar Mountains and found in the UAE in only two areas – Jebel Hafeet (Al Ain) and Wadi Wurayah. Besides the tahr, there is evidence of mountain gazelle, caracal lynx, Blanford's fox and possibly, Arabian leopard.
So far, 63 species of bird – of which 28 per cent are considered endangered by IUCN – have been recorded.

In 2007, the observation of a specimen of tessellated mabuya – a skink species never before recorded in the area – added one more to the list of 12 reptile and amphibian species of which four are endemic to the UAE mountains and northern Oman. The collection of insect samples revealed 74 invertebrate families.

Seven of these insect species are new to science! More discoveries are expected. So far 18 heritage sites have been recorded and mapped, including Bedu settlements, ancient Islamic graveyards, pre-Islamic tombs, porcelain and pottery fragments and one petroglyph (rock carving) site.
Two cairn sites of unknown significance were also discovered in the northern part of the area.

The region is rich in historical sites such as the most ancient mosque in the country (AD 1446) located in Bidiyah, petroglyph sites of Wadi Al-Hayl, Wadi Saham, Wadi ah-Shanah and Hassat al-Risoom, and ancient forts at Fujairah, Bithnah and Awhala. Some 5,000 to 4,000 year-old stone-walled buildings and long collective graves have been excavated in Bidiyah, and a number of sites from the Iron Age have been identified in the mountains and on the coast.

The current EWS-WWF survey identifies six main threats to the Wadi – overgrazing by domestic goats, hunting and poaching, habitat degradation (littering, burning of native vegetation), quarrying, water exploitation and urbanisation.
A project of intense urban development has been proposed within the area and EWS-WWF is strongly opposed to it.

This project is on-hold right now; but might resurface one day. The Wadi Wurayah Protected Area will be a unique natural protected area in the mountains of UAE and an example to other Emirates of how to integrate tourism, local use and involvement of local communities in conservation and management of natural and cultural resources .

– Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary is Senior Features Writer, Friday