Zoo Flourishes in Middle of the Desert

The penguins at Al Ain relax in air-conditioned quarters when not enjoying their pool in the middle of the desert.

The zoo at Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates has been transformed in recent years from a small enclosure with 300 animals into a 3-square-mile complex with 30,000 creatures and the biggest aquarium outside Japan and the United States.

For those species that object to the summer temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, air-conditioned rooms are available to cool off.

Zoo officials say their main priority now is to breed and release back into the desert as many of the large number of native endangered species that they can.

“We are working to protect the wildlife, especially the endangered species. Our main task is to restore the balance of nature through increasing native animals and birds,” manager Ghassan Amin Jaradi said.

Most of the zoo’s 1,500 species are imported, but 15 native species have been caught for breeding.

Nomadic Arab tribes have traditionally hunted the local wildlife. But the advent of guns and vehicles, coupled with the riches brought by oil, turned hunting into wholesale slaughter and many species have been wiped out.

Survivors include the elegant little red fox and the sand fox, the rare Arabian wolf, some gazelle species, and the shy sand cat. Birds also have suffered severely.

Jaradi’s pride is a herd of 200 Arabian oryx, a large white deer with sweeping, pointed horns that one tradition says was the origin of the unicorn legend. The oryx has been extinct locally since 1963.

The zoo herd was bred from four animals caught by Emirates President Sheik Zaid bin Sultan al-Nahayan during a hunting trip to Saudi Arabia’s wild and remote Empty Quarter.

“We plan to set these animals free gradually so they can breed in the wild,” Jaradi said.

“But the animals and birds we reintroduce are only natives because introducing new species would upset the balance again,” he said.

The zoo, founded in 1970 near the oasis city of Al Ain, attracted more than half a million visitors last year.

Local economists say the increased interest in ecology has been inspired partly by the realization that tourists want to see nature, not oil wells.

An increase in the amount of land used for agriculture, as the Emirates have grown more of their own food, has also encouraged more birds to return.

There is no environmental ministry in the Emirates, but other ministries have started to take an interest.

“Thousands of acres have been planted and the native wildlife has a chance to recover,” said one Ministry of Agriculture official.

Hunting is now banned in the Emirates, but the ban does not include the bustard, the bird traditionally hunted by the keen Arab falconers in the region.

However, Sheik Zaid, a falconer himself, has set up exclusion zones for the bustards and Jaradi said his zoo has succeeded in breeding the birds in large numbers to return to the wild.

He said the birds will be fitted with monitoring devices but that the exclusion zones will eventually need to be extended.

Jaradi has 180 staff members and a $3.3-million annual budget to achieve his objectives.

“What encourages us is that we can feel the results of our efforts. Seeing birds in the area has become more common,” he said.