Abu Dhabi: Seventy captive-bred houbara bustards have been released in the wild in Abu Dhabi's Western Region.
The birds were raised at the National Avian Research Centre (NARC) of the International Fund for Houbara Conservation.
The programme is part of Abu Dhabi's efforts to protect houbara bustards and its plan to produce over 50,000 birds to increase its population in their natural habitats across the geographic distribution in Asia and North Africa.
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The birds were released on Saturday by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler's Representative in the Western Region and Chairman of the Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi (EAD), in the Western region of Abu Dhabi.
Shaikh Hamdan said the release of houbara bustards in the UAE is an important part of Abu Dhabi strategy, which was based on the vision and initiatives launched by Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and on the directives of President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Strategy
This strategy supports eradication of houbara poaching, management of hunting activities as well as captive breeding of houbara for restocking depleted populations.
Shaikh Hamdan added that in line with this strategy to increase the number of houbaras in the wild, NARC focuses on restoring houbara population in the UAE's desert habitat, which is known historic ally as stopover point on the migration route of Asian houbara bustards.
The houbara that were selected for release were prepared for the harsh conditions of the desert habitat.
They were kept in large aviaries to develop flying skills.Efforts were also made to reduce contact with humans. The houbara were then kept for a few weeks in aviaries on the release site to acclimatise and then released when food availability is presumably at its best.
Some of the released houbara were equipped with either radio or satellite transmitters, so that NARC ecologists can monitor them after release.
Satellite tracking has shown that some of the released captive-bred Houbara released earlier moved up to 200km away from their release site. One of them travelled for a few days to Saudi Arabia before returning to the UAE. A wild-born chick from a released female even travelled 600km to Oman.
NARC, based in Sweihan in Abu Dhabi, was established in 1989 and designated for research on houbara biology and conservation breeding.
The first experimental releases began back in 2004 with only five houbara, and the numbers increased every year with 201 released in 2009 and 350 projected for 2010, leading to a combined total of 800 houbara birds by the end of February 2010 in 13 different places in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The first successful breeding of released birds in the wild occurred in spring 2007, by three females released in 2005.
