Projects
to breed falcons in captivity were first launched by Sheikh Zayed more than 40
years ago
In the
past, the conservation community and devotees of falconry viewed one another
with a degree of suspicion at best and at worst, open hostility. But there have
been important steps made recently in a growing collaboration between the two
groups. Earlier this year, I attended a conference in Abu Dhabi called Summit
for the Flyways, which brought together both conservation organisations such as
BirdLife International and the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, the
Caucasus and Central Asia, and bodies related to falconry, including the Abu
Dhabi-based International Fund for Houbara Conservation. The meeting, supported
by the UN-affiliated Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species and
the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi, examined threats to migratory birds moving
between Africa, Europe and Asia and discussed initiatives to reduce those
threats.
The
conflict between the two camps has been fading as both have recognised that
there is scope to work together and that the two passions are not mutually
exclusive. After all, there can be no long-term future for falconry if the
survival of wild falcons and their favoured prey, the houbara, is in danger. At
the same time, the conservation of the habitats in which these species live has
a beneficial effect on all other creatures that live there. There are both
shared interests and potential conflicts of interest and the identification of
a happy medium is, surely, the way forward.
As a boy
growing in the English countryside, I developed a profound interest in the
environment and the wildlife around me. With a father who was a top
horticultural writer and a mother who taught biology, that was, perhaps, not
surprising. For years, I used to shoot as well, deriving satisfaction not so
much from the quarry as from the gradually honed ability to observe wildlife
around me. I no longer shoot but I’ve never found it difficult to combine
passion for the environment with support for some forms of country sports,
field sports or blood sports, whatever you might call them.
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