Operation oryx: how this endangered species was brought back from the brink

By the 1970s, the Arabian oryx had been declared extinct in the wild. The major reasons for this were uncontrolled hunting and capture, states the World Wildlife Fund. Since then, Arab nations have been on a mission to reintroduce the species to the natural landscape. And up until now, they have been successful. A breeding programme called Operation Oryx saw five of the creatures delivered to the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, US, in 1963. Thanks to this, the reintroduction of the species into the wild began on Sunday, January 31, 1982, when 10 animals were released into the Omani Central Desert and Coastal Hills in the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary. Since then, releases have taken place across the region, from Oman to Saudi Arabia and, of course, the UAE. Sheikh Zayed, the Founding Father, launched a conservation programme dedicated to oryx soon after the species had been confirmed as endangered. Because of this, the country is now home to the largest population of Arabian oryx in the world, according to the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, whose website states there are more than 6,900 of the creatures here. In 2011, the species was downgraded from "endangered " to "vulnerable " by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Sadly, though, the number of oryx in Oman has plummeted , with only a handful left in the wild and a couple of hundred in captivity.

Operation oryx: how this endangered species was brought back from the brink

The animals went from capturing the minds of poets over 1,000 years ago to near extinction in the 1970s