The Shoura Council requested on Sunday pay raise for the employees of the National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD) and financial support for its government annual budget for the protection of wildlife and its habitat in the Kingdom. The council has called on the NCWCD to step up its efforts to claim new protected terrestrial and marine areas and rehabilitate endangered species and their habitats. There are 16 protected areas in the Kingdom, making up 5 percent of the country's size, according to the NCWCD. The Commission has earlier planned to protect 75 more terrestrial and marine sites, which would account for at least 10 percent of the Kingdom's size. Grazing, woodcutting, and hunting have been regulated or even prohibited in some of the protected areas. For the selection of sites as protected areas, the Commission has used ecological and socio-economic standards including, representative coverage of all the Kingdom's biotopes, protection of existing populations of key wildlife species, and protection of habitats of key biological importance. People on an illegal hunting spree in protected areas might be fined up to SR20,000, Prince Bandr Bin Saud Al-Saud, General Secretary of the NCWCD, has reportedly said. Protected sites are monitored daily by the NCWCD for violations. The Kingdom hosts many exotic animals like the Arabian oryx, Reem gazelle, mountain gazelle in the Uruq Bani Ma'arid reservation and Houbara bustard, cream-colored courser, Dotterel, Golden Eagle, and nine species of larks in Harrat Al-Harrah reservation, rock hyrax, wild cats, and mongooses in Ibex reservation. Herons, pelicans, gulls, and ospreys share the Umm Al-Qammari reservation and sooty falcon, pink-backed Pelican, red-billed Tropik bird, White-Eyed Gull, Saunders Little Tern, Crab Plover, flamingos and many others live in the Farasan Islands. Unregulated hunting excursions, destruction of environment for urban expansion, and dry weather have “considerably” contributed to the elimination of much of wildlife features in the Kingdom, Prince Bandr said. He hoped that new protected areas would bring again natural biological balance of species in the Kingdom. “Man had coexisted in Arabia in harmony with his limited renewable natural resources for centuries; and could safeguard it by applying conservative traditional practices including the hima [protected areas] system which survived for more than 2000 years. Those himas were deteriorated only during the past century,” said the NCWCD website.
