The International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC)
announced it has exceeded yearly expectations of Asian Houbara release into the
wild. A total of 13,000 Asian Houbara birds produced in the UAE and a total of
5,373 chicks hatched at the new Sheikh Khalifa Houbara Breeding Centre at Saih
Al Salem, and 7,732 at the National Avian Research Centre. It is a big leap
from the 2,726 chicks bred last year, thanks to the transfer of 5,000 houbara,
including 3,000 breeding birds, from the IFHC centre in Morocco. The Moroccan
centre bred 17,262 North African houbara this year, up from 14,734 last year.
In Kazakhstan, those numbers rose to 303 chicks from 77. Conservationists warn
that falconry is under threat from poachers and non-traditional practices. According to experts, among some of the many
reasons which have caused a decline in the houbara population in the UAE, is
the demolition of its natural habitat to use the land for city development.;
also many falconers have drifted away from traditional methods of hunting, by
over-trapping houbara birds, which are not the falcon’s natural prey in the
first place. So the falcon becomes accustomed to hunting houbara and begins to
prey on them. The houbara, which weighs between 1.2 and 2.2 kilograms, is not
natural prey for most falcons, who prefer small birds or large rodents. Falcons
must be trained to hunt houbara. The best conservation plan would be to
"kill" the black market for houbara, the issue IFHC face is that they
cannot determine the size of the black market, which is why these surveys are
important.
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