PROTECTING IBEX

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4833, 14 April 1936, Page 2

PROTECTING IBEX

SANCTUARY IN THE DESERT. A REMARKABLE EXPERIMENT. With the possible exception of the wild sheep there is no animal that shows such natural terror of man as the ibex, the mountain goat that frequents the rocky hills of Asia and North-eastern Africa. He is a small, stocky beast about the size of the ordinary domestic goat, and the male of mature years carries a pair of wonderful, sickle-shaped, serrated .horns that curve back towards his rump in a. symmetrical sweep. The ibex lives in the harshest and wildest of the Asian and African mountains barren limestone and granite crags that appear at first sight to be absolutely devoid of vegetation. The ibex is gifted with ,the most wonderful sense of smell, and if one is stalking him in the mountains one obtains the most convincing proofs of the effect that the -human scent has on this animal. A veering puff of wind will carry one's smell across a mountain gorge some five hundred yards wide, and immediately up goes the head of the ibex, there is one terrified whistling snort, and he is off at full gallop, and probably will not stop again till he is on the next range of hills. Valley Refuge. Some thirty years ago Prince Kamel el Din Hussein, the son of the late King of Egypt,, discovered that certain female ibex frequented from time to time a certain wadi or valley a few miles south-east of Cairo. The wadi had a minute stream in it, and, as the result a certain amount of vegetation also, which attracted .these wild goats. He conceived the idea of making an ibex preserve, and as protection from roaming Bedouins was the first ..consideration, he imported some wild hillmen from Albania and .appointed them as keepers. This (writes Major C. S. Jarvis in the London Observer) was a very wise move, as Bedouins, when filling the post of keepers, have somewhat lax ideas on the exact duties of the profession, and consider that the animal in question should.be protected rigorously from all sportsmen with the exception of themselves and their relatives. The Albanians "keepered" the wadi and its immediate surroundings so effectively that no Arab dared go within twenty miles of it, and the result was apparent immediately. The female ibex at once realised they were protected, and showed no fear whatsoever of human beings. They settled down contentedly in the wadi, despite the fact that the Albanians built themselves a house, and a small gas-engine was installed to pump water. Trek of the Males. To this little sanctuary in the mountains of Egypt's eastern desert come the big males from the surrounding hills in the rutting season. There are always one or two young billies in evidence among the females, but the general influx occurs in the autumn, when magnificent animals that have travelled a hundred miles or more put in an appearance. One large and heavy-horned beast, which was known and recognisable by reason of a wounded foot, was proved to have travelled over three hundred miles to visit his female friends in the wadi sanctuary. The wonderful success that has attended this small experiment suggests that with a little care and the expenditure of a very small sum of money equally rare and shy animals could bis saved from extermination. It is the desert animals that are in the greatest need of protection, for the improved efficiency of the motor-car has made the running down of them in the open a fairly simple matter, and three particularly interesting and beautiful creatures that used to frequent the wastes on each side of the Nile are now to all tents and purposes extinct. L

Animals That Have Disappeared.

They are the addax, a rather heavy antelope with a good head that some eighty years ago were numerous all over the Western Desert; the oryx, a beautiful beast with long, rapier horns, which used to frequent both Sinai and the West; and the ostrich, whose eggs can still be found ; in the wildest and driest spots in the Libyan Desert. The eggs are probably fifty or more years old, but it is proof that the ostrich at one time was found all over this waste of sand. These three desert creatures have completely disappeared from Egyptian territory, but a few pairs of each could be supplied by the Darfur area of the Sudan, and a few of the Arabian variety of "the oryx and sthe ostrich are still to be found in the most easterly parts of Trans-Jordan and could be obtained for the repopulation of Sinai. This would be necessary, as the Nile appears to be the natural animal and bird frontier between Africa and Asia, and the fauna and feather found east of the river are usually of the Arabian variety as opposed to the African. It would be a thousand pities if these animals ceased to exist altogether; and, as Egypt has shown her ability to create one most successful sanctuary, it is hoped that in the interests of zoology she will not be content to rest on her laurels, and will—in the vast unoccupied wastes that surround the Nile —attempt to re-hv troduce the creatures that once roamed over them in great herds.