How Did This Animal Survive Extinction In Dubai?

In the past, 1972 to be exact, the last wild Arabian oryx was hunted. This symbol of the Arabian desert should have been lost forever, but fast forward to today and you'll find hundreds of them in the UAE alone. This is a story of how this incredible animal became the first species to ever be brought back from extinction in the wild. My name is Gharadieh Rasmus and I am currently the Conservation Manager at the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, also commonly known as the DDCR. The mission to save the oryx was called Operation Oryx. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed saw that all of these oryx were being almost hunted into extinction. What they did was they took a small amount of oryx towards Arizona in the US. They essentially put them under very strict control measures, security, made them breed. Once the population was at a strong enough point, they reintroduced those oryx back into the Arabian Peninsula over here. If you look at the IUCN rates data list, the Arabian oryx is one of the only species to be downgraded. They used to be extinct in the wild and they have been downgraded to vulnerable out in the wild right now. So the mission essentially was to achieve that. It was a species that can show to everybody, to all the conservationists, all the natural enthusiasts, that this is what we can do. If we really put our mind to it, if we dedicate a piece of land to a specific species, we can conserve them, we can actually save them. The Arabian oryx is the smallest of four oryx species in the world. And if you look at the entire structure of where they are built, the oryx's superpowers are definitely the adaptations to survive out in this environment. So let's start by the coats. The coat is white, it reflects the heat of the sun. If you look at the feet structure, they've got a very wide hoof, so that's easy to walk on the sand. They can go up to about, say, two months without water, actually drinking water, getting a lot of their moisture from the environment, eating plants. The black markings around their face produces the glare of the sun. And then as well, what they have is what a lot of biologists refer to as a wonder net, is they have this series of veins and arteries running through the nose, cooling down the blood and cooling down the brain. So essentially cooling their body temperature about between three to four degrees. So with a range of superpowers like this, why did they go extinct? In the past, the oryx were valued sources of meat and their hides, precious sources of leather. Uncontrolled hunting and poaching would eventually drive the Arabian oryx to extinction in the wild. If you look at 20 years ago, this area was massively disturbed. There used to be a huge amount of camel farms, goat farms, sheep farms in this area. We took away all those farms and we started allowing the natural vegetation to grow back. It's been about 25 years now since we've done that. Since then, we have just supplemented the oryx's diet by providing them with additional feed on a daily basis. Hopefully within the next five to 10 years, we can take away that supplement feed and we can allow them to actually feed on a natural vegetation. Culturally, I believe that the Arabian oryx is hugely important to both the Emiratis, the Qataris, the Bedouins, the Saudis, every Middle Eastern that used to live in this area for hundreds of years. I believe that they resemble themselves or associate themselves with these animals because they survived over here for hundreds of years. They've made this area a very harsh area. They've made it their home. They have adapted, they have flourished and they've made a huge success of the Middle East. It's a tremendous privilege for me to be able to say that I am part of protecting the UAE's national animal. I believe the younger version of me, if you could see what I'm doing right now, would be absolutely ecstatic to grow up and go do it himself. Driving to work in the mornings, I get oryx on the road and I think to myself, this is my traffic.