Plans to re-introduce 500 Scimitar-horned oryxes in Chad : 500 scimitar-horned oryx to be introduced to Chad game reserve | The National
Video of a group of 25 Scimitar-horned oryxes brought to Chad : https://www.facebook.com/EnvironmentAgencyAD/videos/467621083439114/
Neat! They've been successfully bred in captivity for a long time, I was wondering when reintroduction would happen.
Reintroductions in other range countries have occurred elsewhere, including Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal. Thanks in no undue part to the international conservation charity SCF and the private breeders' group EWF in Texas, a good many Gulf Arab shaykhs, a consortium of Western zoos both in Europe and the Americas through their species conservation breeding programs.
Laugh all you like. I personally know some of these individuals and I could not care less what easy "fun" lines one comes up with. They have done loads more for conservation and saving individual endangered species than you might like to think. I will leave it at that. I for one am happy this new Chad project has come to pass as it was right in the home territory where all Western zoos' source animals originated. It is kind of a homecoming for us all.
Yes. I fully support any method which actually helps animal populations. Our problem in Australia is that the main zoos have a monopoly on most species and even though they are unable to keep a sufficiently large population to keep it healthy and genetically diverse, they dont want anyone else to keep and breed these species. Mary River Station is the one exception in Australia. If we had more places like it throughout Australia our populations of rare exotic animals would be much more healthy.
An other article about the re-introduction : Oryx return to Chad thanks to UAE breeding programme | The National
Another group re-introduced : Second Group of the Once-Extinct African Oryx to Be Released Into the Wild | Smart News | Smithsonian
Good to hear things are going well for them! Gives me hope that other species could be successfully reintroduced.
Some very good news from this project released late yesterday, just before the end of 2019. A scimitar-horned oryx calf has been born to a female who was herself born in the wild from the reintroduced stock. The news comes from the Facebook page of the Sahara Conservation Fund.
