UAE support for 100 conservation projects from species fund
A TOTAL of 100 conservation projects for endangered species of plants and wildlife in Madagascar have received grants from the Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) Species Conservation Fund, attendees at a special talk on conservation in the island were told at a meeting last night at the capital’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club of the UAE (United Arab Emirates).
The fund has now given 2 041 grants worldwide, worth more than $19 million (R288m), benefiting conservation work on 1341 species and sub-species in 170 countries.
The Madagascar projects, covering a wide range of endangered species, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates and plants, have received $900 000 in grants, said Nicolas Heard, head of fund management at the MBZ fund.
Recipients have included a range of scientific and conservation organisations and universities, as well as local governmental and NGOs.
Heard was introducing a talk titled “Madagascar pochards and ploughshare tortoises – protecting the rarest of the rare in Madagascar”, presented by Dr H Glyn Young, head of the birds department at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust at Jersey Zoo, in the British Channel Islands. Both projects have received support from the MBZ fund.
The lecture was organised by the Emirates Natural History Group and co-sponsored by the MBZ fund and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi.
The Madagascar pochard, one of the world’s rarest species of duck, was first discovered in the 19th century, with a few individuals recorded occasionally up until 1970. A single bird was captured by a resident in 1991, but with no further records before 2000, the species was then believed to be extinct. In 2006, however, some birds were found in a new location, and in 2008, Young said, a “Saving the Madagascar pochard project” was launched in collaboration with Britain’s Wildlife and Wetlands Trust.
A major programme of fieldwork and captive breeding then got under way, with support from the MBZ fund.
By 2012, with sufficient birds having been bred in captivity, planning for reintroduction of the species into a suitable lake in northern Madagascar got under way, with the support of the local community. Today, there’s a stable population in the wild, where 64 birds were counted in May, and 93 in breeding centres. |