Oman chooses oil over the oryx
The government’s plan to attract more international tourists may be hampered by the lack of the wild Arabian antelopes after most of a wildlife reserve was appropriated for oil exploration, Quentin Muller, Foreign Correspondent, reports
HAIMA, OMAN // It is dawn at the Al Wusta wildlife reserve in Jiddat Al Harasis, Oman. The noise of a car door shutting startles an antelope as it licks the dew.
Dressed in military jackets and armed with M16 rifles, rangers Thany Al Harsusi and Ahmed Al Harsusi are ready for their working day – seven hours in a 4x4 off-road vehicle, patrolling the enclosure that protects the 2,824 square kilometre reserve.
“Poachers are our main occupation. We sometimes have to deal with people who have rifles,” says Haithem Al Amri, the reserve manager. “This year, we had two cases which could have turned to tragedy. Armed poachers came with several cars and one day they surrounded one of my rangers.”
The day before, he had been at the Nizwa court for yet another case of vandalism on the enclosure. Thany Al Harsusi, 21, and Ahmed Al Harsusi, 25, drive fast through the vast, rocky desert, investigating the slightest sighting of smoke on the horizon, unknown tyre tracks or human footprints.
After dozens of kilometres, Thany spots a heap of abandoned bags. Inside, he finds 7mm bullets, the kind often used for hunting. They collect evidence and burn the rest.
Suddenly, a car appears in the distance and they give chase. The driver is a camel rider they know but Ahmed insists on checking the car.
“In case of direct confrontation with poachers, which hasn’t happened to me yet, we have the right to fire once in the air if they do not cooperate. However, if they flee or shoot at us, we can fire at them,” he explains.
Among the species protected in the reserve is the Arabian oryx, which have been hunted since ancient times for their meat, skin and the supposed medicinal properties of their blood.
The last wild oryx in Oman was reportedly shot in 1972 and the species declared extinct in the wild. But in 1980, 10 oryx were reintroduced into the reserve. According to the Arabian Oryx Regional Conservation Strategy and Action Plan, their numbers increased steadily, exceeding 400 by 1996.
Yet in 2007, Oman cut the size of the reserve by 90 per cent so that it could conduct oil exploration. The reserve had been on the Unesco list of world heritage sites since 1994, but in an unprecedented move, Unesco removed it. Wildlife habitat has been shrinking ever since. “The animals’ space has been declining and many species became scarce,” says Hani Al Saadi, 28, a biologist at Al Wusta. “These people of the oil company came, dug everything, destroyed, and some filmed themselves hunting animals. Before, there was a real diversity necessary to oryx. What’s left today? Hunters.”
About 20 oryx bred in captivity were recently released as part of the reintroduction programme. “We have 637 captive individuals. Sometimes we release some. I saw three yesterday in the reserve, but many were killed by hunters,” Mr Al Saadi says.
The enclosure of the Al Wusta reserve in 2009 is still a hotly-debated subject among the Harsusi tribe, who have officially been entrusted with protecting the oryx since 1980 and are employees of the reserve. Mohammed Haziz, 70, a member of the tribe who was head ranger from 1980 to 2007, says the enclosure was necessary.
“If there were no barrier, animals would go towards new houses and roads,” he says. “And we have a big poaching problem. How can you secure a protected zone against hunters without enclosures? And this oil company which took all the space.”
His fellow tribesman, Abdullah Ahmad, 50, disagrees. He believes that the Omani government built the enclosure “because they think that we are not able to protect the oryx any more as we did for decades”. Sheikh Salem Chamli Al Harsusi is in favour of oil exploration. “Oil companies are good things because they offer job opportunities for us. Regarding the enclosure, I am against it because that goes against our traditions, but we shall deal with it,” he says.
There is no doubt that oil is a far more lucrative revenue source than tourism for Oman. Tourism accounts for only 3 per cent of Oman’s GDP at best, while oil revenues made up 44 per cent of the country’s GDP as of December 2015, says Prof Shaul Gabbay , director of the global research institute at the Posner centre for international development and an expert on the Arabian Gulf. “The comparison between the petroleum industry and the tourist sector is not a fair one,” he says.
While the Harsusis continue to argue among themselves, the number of wild oryx in Oman remains close to zero. And although the government plans to attract more than 5 million international visitors a year by 2040, Al Wusta’s reserve does not really attract any tourists any more.