A new
Arabic app aims to celebrate the diversity of migratory birds in the Middle
East
Published: February
13, 2019 15:44By
Ashley Hammond Chief Reporter
According
to BirdLife International, every autumn over two billion birds channel through
the Middle East from Europe and Central Asia on their way down to Africa,
before migrating back again in spring.
A quarter
of that number, however, are shot or trapped by hunters in the region every
year, and up until recently few efforts were being made to protect them.
Now,
however, a new app — the world’s first to be launched in Arabic — by conservation
charity, the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, Caucasus and Central
Asia (OSME), looks to change attitudes towards wildlife in the region.
Based on
the book Birds of the Middle East, which was also translated into Arabic and
launched at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai in 2017, the
free to download app looks to take the fight for conservation to a wider and
ever younger, tech-savvy, audience.
“Hunting
is one of the big concerns so we hope to try and get people — the next
generation or the generation after that — to appreciate birds for their natural
beauty and incredible behaviour, rather than just being merely seen as
something to be shot,” OSME chairman Rob Sheldon told the Weekend Review.
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