Nature and Heritage
Room to roam
It was in 2014 that an Arabian leopard was last sighted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The animal was dead: poisoned by a camel herder who feared hyenas, or maybe wolves, were attacking his herd.
Heartbreaking though the discovery was, it showed leopards were still active in the KSA. Today, the most optimistic estimate puts the number in Arabia at 200, concentrated in Oman and Yemen.
After centuries of persecution that has brought them to the brink, this most adaptable of predators, which once roamed huge distances from the fertile hills of Anatolia to the coast of Yemen, has learned to be inconspicuous when humans are around. As Hani Tatwany, CEO of the Arabian Leopard Fund says, “one could be right next to you in a wadi and you wouldn’t know it. They will just sit there and watch you.”
We don’t want these animals to be just poetic texts or carvings on stone
Hani Tatwany – CEO of the Arabian Leopard Fund
Tatwany’s fund is working with the Royal Commission for AlUla to bring the leopards back. An area in the huge territory has been reserved for the first planned reintroduction of animals from the captive breeding programme sponsored by AlUla.
But it’s best to be clear at the outset. Don’t expect to be met at your hotel door by a 4x4 ready for an evening's leopard-spotting anytime soon. The introduction of the leopard is one of the most ambitious, but also more complex tasks facing the advocates of apex predators around the world.
Data is another casualty of falling numbers. Tatwany candidly admits that the leopard inhabits the realm of speculation. The number of animals is a ‘guesstimate’, he says: and it is hard to know how far they range and what their lifestyle is in the wild when sightings are so rare.
But – cautiously, experimentally, eventually – the captive leopards will return to the land in and beyond AlUla.
The reintroduction of the leopard is only the high-profile part of a bigger picture. To the environmentalist, campaigner and UK government advisor Ben Goldsmith, “the Saudi plan to piece back together the terribly depleted and overgrazed ecosystem at AlUla is one of the most inspired projects in the whole world. It will light up the imagination of people.”
Goldsmith is an advocate of rewilding – the principle that if you let the land return to its natural state, nature will find an equilibrium between the environment and the species that depend on it. The doctrine struggles to find mainstream political support: not so in Saudi Arabia, where the ambition is to return 30% of the land to nature. As that land covers 2,149,690 square kilometres – it is the world’s 13th largest country – this is more than a symbolic commitment.
Ben Goldsmith
Environmentalist, campaigner and UK government advisor
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The elusive Arabian leopard has become the symbol of AlUla’s far-reaching plan to ‘rewild’ Arabia
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The revenant
In 2019, the big cat charity Panthera concluded a landmark agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to save the Arabian leopard, and leopards everywhere. The $20 million plan came about after a chance meeting between Thomas Kaplan, the founder and CEO of Pathera and culture minister Prince Badr bin Farhan.
Kaplan says the agreement gives the charity three vital assets to ensure the leopards' survival in the wild: the tools, the land and the financial commitment. “The Arabian leopard will not go extinct on our watch and the watch of the Saudi government. Of that, I am very, very confident,” says Kaplan.
As we’ve seen, the reintroduction is a delicate process that cannot be rushed. In the meantime, the designers of the project are meeting the local communities to offer reassurance and guarantees that their livelihoods will not be damaged when the big cats return (we may see hyenas reintroduced before the leopard).
“In the case of the apex predator,” says Kaplan, “first and foremost, you have to show them not to be afraid. These cats are more afraid of people than people are of the cats. If we were dealing with tigers and lions, I might have a different narrative, but not in the case of the Arabian leopard, nor in the case of the cheetah.”
Hani Tatwany
CEO of the Arabian Leopard Fund, says that for the young generation, leopards and other species should be more than just memories
Watching our every move: how can humans coexist with the Arabian leopard?
Irina Bokova says the story of AlUla is about the relationship between nature, human beings and heritage
With that in mind, it’s striking that Irina Bokova says that the AlUla project “goes beyond world heritage”.
Striking, because Bokova was director general of UNESCO between 2007 and 2019: she was, and remains, an important figure in the rise of world heritage as a touristic phenomenon. So what does it mean to go beyond world heritage?
“It’s about how to inscribe this site in the livelihoods of people,” says Bokova. “How to look at it from the point of view of history, but also the future. To tell the story of AlUla doesn’t just mean we protect one world heritage site. It is really about the relationship between nature, human beings and heritage.”
We tend, lazily, to think of the desert landscape as untouched, pristine – a true wilderness. Appearances can be deceptive. In the Arabian peninsula, the use of pastoral land may not, and is not, as intrusive as the palm plantations of south-east asia or the mega-fields of arable Europe. But the cost to species of our ever-more ingenious ability to exploit the land and increase our herds of domesticated livestock is just as pronounced here. It is only in recent years that conservationists have managed to reintroduce ungulates and various bird species to Arabia. That gives Hani Tatwany hope for future reintroductions, including the most dramatic of all: for the gazelle and other ungulates are almost certainly a prey species for the leopard.
Human heritage is a fragile thing too; and in AlUla’s case, that is just as important to protect. The desert air has done its work preserving the 111 carved tombs of Hegra, the extraordinary necropolis that arose in the flourishing of the Nabataean empire between the 4th century BCE and of the first century AD. It’s no exaggeration to say that for the majority of international travellers, the opportunity to visit AlUla will be the equivalent of discovering a new Machu Picchu, Bagan or Angkor Wat.
May camels safely graze? The reintroduction of apex predators will require careful handling
“The primary issues will be preventing human-animal conflict. And that conflict is usually in the area of livestock predation. These are cats. They don't know the difference between something that's domestic and something that’s wild...we have to make sure that all of the communities know that should there be cases where livestock is taken, they will be compensated for it immediately – and that under no circumstances should they kill a cat”, explains Kaplan.
For future visitors to AlUla, the possibility of witnessing an extraordinary experiment in rewilding and a new compact between humans and their historic environment will certainly be as much of a draw as the events,
the resorts and the sightseeing.
Yet rewilding and reintroductions, such as the plan to revive the Arabian leopard, are often portrayed as a battle between nature and humans.
Wherever there is a plan to reintroduce lost carnivores, you will find opposition. One county in the US state of New Mexico even built wolf-proof bus shelters to protect their children from the perceived threat of attack (even if the threat wolves pose to humans is really the subject of fairy stories rather than news articles). When a Scottish landowner floated the idea of bringing back wolves to the Highlands wilderness, the outrage from farmers and walking groups quickly persuaded him to retreat.
That frustrates the rewilding campaigner and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith, who points out that “every continental Europe has its wolves back – including The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. We live perfectly happily alongside these charismatic species”
But whether it’s whale watching in the Pacific or monitoring tiger numbers in Nepal, we’ve also seen how the interaction between humans and nature can be turned into a force for good – and survival.
“For someone like me, who began working in wildlife conservation 35 years ago, the future is a very promising one,” says Hani Tatwany. He sees the impetus coming as much from the people in a region with some of the world’s youngest populations, as from the government.
Eventually nature in Arabia will return to where it was before. And that will benefit humans, because without nature humans cannot function
Hani Tatwany – CEO of the Arabian Leopard Fund
Investor and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan on his ‘very personal’ relationship with AlUla
'How will AlUla balance development against the protection of
human and natural heritage?
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The future of AlUla as a global centre of academic research as well as heritage, conservation and tourism was cemented in November, when the Royal Commission for AlUla and UNESCO signed a partnership in Paris.
Unesco will help create new biosphere reserves, Geoparks and list AlUla’s ‘intangible’ heritage traditions. Through 10 new programmes, AlUla will act as a laboratory for sustainable development models and conservation practices.
One initiative, Unesco’s Memory of the World Programme, promotes written heritage in the Arab world – the ancient sites of Hegra and Dadan are rich in petrography and hieroglyphs. Saudis will also provide support for five eight-month fellowships for young archaeologists to add to the 400+ fellowships abroad for students of agronomy and sustainable development.
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