How Do You See The Other Side Of The Emirate? Safeguarding Dubai's Last Patch Of Pristine Desert And Its Animals

A species almost extinct in this region, the Dubai Desert Conservation has helped to reintroduce it. 

Where dunes meet the sky in the sand like a hieroglyph, we find our first sign, the jagged of two talon prints. These prints are fresh and justify our 5 am start; by midday, the remorseless wind has erased the sand's diary of crisscrossing tracks left by nocturnal hunters like the pharaoh eagle owl. But we need more than prints to prove the owl's presence and the value of the reserve's efforts. We need evidence that these prints are fresh and that they justify our 5 am start. By midday, the sand's diary of crisscrossing tracks left by nocturnal hunters like the pharaoh eagle owl that the remorseless wind has removed. Species have almost diminished in this region, but the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve has helped to reintroduce them. But we require more than prints to prove the owl's presence and the value of the reserve's efforts. We need proof.

Silhouetted before me is Naswa, a cathedral of rock covered in crevices that could shelter owl nests. "I'll look into this one. You take the one on the left," says Pete, who has been on this expedition thrice before, gesturing to two gaping crags. Like bathers dipping toes into boiling bathwater, we test each step duly, sending showers of stones down the mountainside. Within minutes, Pete has found a pellet, a thumb-sized clump of undigested bone and hair regurgitated by an owl after breakfasting on a rodent or two. We record the coordinates on the GPS and clamber around the spires of stone hot on the scent. Eventually, the sunrise illuminates something even more special: a shapely feather in the pharaoh eagle owl's majestic livery.

"This is why the data you guys collect is so important," says Basil Roy, one of the reserve's conservation officers, as he examines the feather back at the DDCR office. "Dubai is coming closer. There is only a lot of coastline to build on. And then…" Dubai is coming closer. There is only so much coastline to build on. And then…" We all are aware of what comes next. For the DDCR, the nearby wave of highways, concrete and tourist tarps is not just an eyesore. It is an existential threat. A haven for wildlife and a beacon for biodiversity, the reserve is one of the most successful conservation projects in the Middle East, representing 5 per cent of Dubai's total territory. Yet, with the Emirati economy booming, every square metre of territory is a potential Ferrari World or Barbie Land. After all, it is only a desert, right?

"Overcoming the myth that the desert is empty is one of our biggest hurdles," says Roy. "We have to prove that there is something worth protecting here." Dubai's desert is home to 560 species of flora and fauna. Properly maintained, it is a rich habitat. However, overfarming and unrestrained development have decimated the local graf trees and fire bushes, establishing the ecosystem. Today, it is so depicted that even locals dismiss it as a wasteland. Roy, with colleagues Maria Jose Martin and Gerhard Erasmus, are here to prove otherwise. But monitoring 225 square km with just three scientists is demanding. Suppose the reserve is to demonstrate its worth and resist attempts to encroach on its pristine sands; it needs empirical, up-to-date evidence of its biodiversity. It needs  Biosphere Expeditions; Biosphere provides conservation projects like the DDCR with budding citizen scientists worldwide, people who prefer getting stuck in rather than getting away from it all. The award-winning charity trains volunteers to be the boots on the ground, thus gathering the data upon which conservation depends. In return, expeditionists contribute while on the frontlines of global wildlife conservation. Since 2012, Biosphere's volunteers have helped the DDCR survey its wildlife by taking DNA samples of Gordon's wildcat in mapping the dens of sand foxes. As well as this year's survey of the pharaoh eagle owl, the DDCR is also relying on us to complete the annual quadrant survey of its wildlife, dividing the entire reserve into 64 two-kilometre squares and dispatching us volunteers to record the wildlife in each quadrant by quadrant.

"If we can prove that fewer animals are seen at the perimeter this year compared to last," Roy explains. "We can fight against the development happening on the reserve's borders." That is why I am standing on a dune with three British, two Germans and an Italian in the mid-afternoon heat. Sweat drips onto my binoculars, and my hands shake, but I keep my eyes fixed on the creature posing atop a distant dune, an Arabian oryx. You can witness them from a mile away; without natural predators, they perch up high to catch the wind's moisture, their brilliant white coat deflecting the sun. Thanks to the DDCR's conservation efforts, the oryx is the only species to have gone from extinct in the wild to merely vulnerable. Arabian and sand gazelle are more challenging to spot and harder to tell apart: "Always look at the neck. It is a lot thicker on the sand gazelle," advises Pete, our four-tour veteran. Both are now so abundant that you can barely drive a few Bambi ears akimbo watching as you pass. The skies are perfectly packed with a southern desert shrike, a bird that impales its prey upon spiky branches, oil-black desert ravens and even a critically endangered Egyptian vulture. But most common are invasive doves, sparrows and pigeons. A decade ago, the stretch of highway linking the DDCR to Dubai was two lanes. Now, it is eight, with housing estates mushrooming around it.

A bird cries, and the fox leaps away to its den at dawn, just as it has done for a thousand centuries. We, not it, are the interlopers.

"And with people," Roy tells us, "come scavengers like pigeons and sparrows flocking into the DDCR and outcompeting native species." We headed to Al Faqa in the reserve's remote south the following day for a bird survey. The quiet is absolute. Waves of mist make islands of the dunes; their oryx marooned as explorers shipwrecked amid uncharted oceans. But we are detained by a rare sight. A step away from the track, the wise eyes of an Arabian red fox looking back at us over its slender, silvery shoulder. The wind blows. The fox stares, and time stops; its ears twitch this way, and the whiskered dignity of its expression suggests it knows more than it can tell us. Can we understand this? A bird cries, and the fox leaps away to its den at dawn, just as it has done for a thousand centuries. We, not it, are the interlopers. After a week in the reserve, we cross the perimeter back into the real world. Soon, the horizon erupts with science-fiction skyscrapers improbable as a mirage of the dream of a desert people longing for plenty.

Dubai's incredible megacity is ever expanding as it turns desert into wealth into carbon and intensifies dead heat. And standing in its path scattered oryx, a head of gazelle, a fox at dawn. Three scientists and some volunteers with clipboards. The DDCR turns the desert into the living ecosystem it once was, but it does not make much money. It is not Ferrari World or Barbies Land. How long can a ripe chunk of virgin land survive? Through rivers of tarmac and acres of concrete, Dubai's glass and steel shimmer seems to provide everything. But there is no gazelle, no oryx, no pharaoh eagle owl. Regarding wildlife in Dubai's urban sprawl, there is no other word for it: a desert.

#uaenews #desert #conservation #uaeupdate #ddcr #dubaiupdate