The houbara bustard is used to hunt with falcons / Photo courtesy Impact Porter Novelli
The houbara bustard is used to hunt with falcons / Photo courtesy Impact Porter Novelli
The houbara bustard is used to hunt with falcons / Photo courtesy Impact Porter Novelli
The houbara bustard is used to hunt with falcons / Photo courtesy Impact Porter Novelli

Nature lovers and hunters forge unlikely alliances at a birding summit


  • English
  • Arabic

Many years ago, growing up in the delightful English county of Sussex, I came to love the environment around me. Perhaps that was in part because my father was a gardener and author of gardening books while my mother was a biology teacher, but the birds and other animals, the trees and the flowers of the meadows and woodlands fascinated me. As I got older, I began to shoot, wandering unobtrusively around, learning where to wait for pigeons coming in to roost or how to catch a wary rabbit unawares.

I never actually killed much, although I occasionally supplemented my pocket money with small sums given for killing a rabbit that was raiding my father’s vegetable patch or that ever-present pest, a grey squirrel.

As the years passed, I no longer had the opportunity to go shooting and it has been decades since I have done so. The love of nature that I learned, though, has stayed with me ever since. Perhaps that is why I have always believed that it's perfectly understandable that many of those who hunt, whether with the gun, the falcon or the fishing rod, can, at the same time, be passionate supporters of conservation. Many leading conservationists still engage in hunting in some form.

It was, therefore, with considerable interest that I attended the Summit for the Flyways conference held in Abu Dhabi last week. Organised by international conservation charity BirdLife International, it was hosted by the International Foundation for Houbara Conservation (IFHC) which, at its heart, has the objective of increasing wild populations of the houbara bustard so that it will be possible to continue sustainable hunting with falcons.

Falconry is unpopular among much of the birdwatching community. How, I wondered, would it be possible for a collection of people with such different views to come together amicably to discuss ways of tackling threats to the world’s birds?

Yet among both dedicated conservationists who had never hunted in their lives and those who have a passion for pastimes like falconry, as well as for conserving the environment and wildlife, there was an evident willingness to engage and share ideas, proposals and the results of research.

Just over 40 years ago, I attended the first International Conference on Falconry and Conservation, held in Abu Dhabi and convened by the late Sheikh Zayed. It would have been almost unthinkable then for the same kind of dialogue I witnessed last week between falconers and non-hunting conservationists to have taken place. The debate on conservation, though, has moved on and, as with much else within the Emirates, the implementation here of Sheikh Zayed’s own vision, in this case for sustainable hunting, has played a part.

The discussion of an action plan to conserve the saker falcon, much prized by Arab falconers, provided a good example. Over the last 20 years, as the managing director of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD), Mohammed Al Bowardi, noted, the world population of the species has dropped by about 50 per cent, partly because of the taking of falcons but also because of habitat loss and electrocution by power lines.

In Mongolia a programme to erect special nesting boxes, run jointly by EAD and local authorities, has led to a substantial increase in the saker population. A highlight of the last day of the conference was the announcement of a new Mohammed bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund. Its first initiative is the allocation of $1 million as seed money for a new campaign to bring conservationists, governments and electricity companies together to find a solution to the problem of bird mortality caused by power lines. Both projects might be of benefit for falconers but there are major benefits for conservation too.

Differing views on falconry and other forms of hunting will not disappear nor, indeed, should one expect them to do so. Millions of birds are still killed or trapped by illegal hunting every year, although it is encouraging to note that preliminary estimates suggest the UAE has the best record in the region, thanks to effective implementation of legislation. Around the world, however, the concept of sustainable hunting is now much more widespread than it was four decades ago, as well as understanding of the way in which it can contribute to conservation.

At the conference, conservationists of all kinds seem to have made major progress in pursuit of a shared commitment to protecting the world’s bird species, one in eight of which is now globally threatened. Looking ahead, the UAE seems set to continue to play its part. As a former hunter, now primarily a bird-lover, that is something I welcome.

Peter Hellyer is a consultant specialising in the UAE’s history and culture

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WHAT IS GRAPHENE?

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

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Sustainable Development Goals

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation

10. Reduce inequality  within and among countries

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its effects

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development

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Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

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Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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  • Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
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The Bio

Ram Buxani earned a salary of 125 rupees per month in 1959

Indian currency was then legal tender in the Trucial States.

He received the wages plus food, accommodation, a haircut and cinema ticket twice a month and actuals for shaving and laundry expenses

Buxani followed in his father’s footsteps when he applied for a job overseas

His father Jivat Ram worked in general merchandize store in Gibraltar and the Canary Islands in the early 1930s

Buxani grew the UAE business over several sectors from retail to financial services but is attached to the original textile business

He talks in detail about natural fibres, the texture of cloth, mirrorwork and embroidery 

Buxani lives by a simple philosophy – do good to all

THE DETAILS

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Four stars

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets