The Saudi National Center for Wildlife announced last week that the International Union for Conservation of Nature has included the Ibex Protected Area, to the south of the capital Riyadh, in its exclusive Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas. The ibex reserve, managed by the National Center for Wildlife, became the first in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to meet all the criteria and indicators required to join the elite list. According to the IUCN Green List website, only 87 reserves out of over 300,000 protected areas worldwide currently meet its stringent criteria for inclusion.
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Inclusion in the IUCN Green List represents a global acknowledgment by independent experts of the efficacy of the Ibex Protected Area’s management programmes and reflects the reserve’s success in meeting the Green List’s key criteria, which includes effective governance, transparency and accountability, management based on best available scientific expertise and local knowledge, consideration of social and economic context, and proactive planning, the National Center for Wildlife said in a press statement.
“The ibex reserve’s Green List status not only enhances its international standing, but also drives forward our broader conservation and sustainable development initiatives,” said Mohammed Qurban, chief executive officer of the National Center for Wildlife. “We are actively collaborating with our wildlife sector partners to bring all our national reserves up to this international standard.”
The National Center for Wildlife currently manages 11 protected areas across Saudi Arabia. Since 2017, it has supported the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s marine protected areas from 3.6% to 6.5% and its terrestrial protected areas from 4.5% to 18.1%—and the kingdom is on track to reach the 30×30 goal enshrined in the U.N.’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, it said in the statement.
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Situated in the Tuwaiq mountain range in central Saudi Arabia, the Ibex Protected Area was established in 1988 at the request of local communities to safeguard a herd of the Nubian ibex, scientific name Capra nubiana, a threatened species of desert-dwelling wild goat. Ibex are distinguished by the male’s large recurved horns with transverse ridges in front. The Nubian ibex, which has about 4,500 individuals in the wild, is found in the mountainous areas of North Africa and Arabia. It was earlier considered a subspecies of the Alpine ibex. The National Center for Wildlife said that its efforts had resulted in a significant rebound in the ibex population in the region.
The centre collaborates with local communities surrounding the reserve and across the kingdom to promote sustainable development, ecotourism, scientific research, and heritage preservation.
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The ibex reserve also provides a habitat for other vulnerable species such as rock hyraxes, foxes, birds, and reptiles, and contains diverse vegetation, including acacia trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses.
Eleven other sites from Brazil, China, Colombia, France and Zambia were also included in the IUCN Green List. Among the 11 was a second site from Saudi Arabia, the King Salman Royal Nature Reserve, an area that houses over 300 species and over 420 archaeological assets, according to the IUCN Green List.
SOURCE: PR Newswire
