The United Arab Emirates joined countries around the world recently to celebrate the International Vulture Awareness Day.

The event, which is marked on the first Saturday in September each year, is designed to draw attention to the threats facing this group of bird species, which are of enormous ecological importance. By scavenging the carcasses of dead animals, they play a key role in preventing the spread of diseases both among humans and among other animals.

Many vulture species are under threat, with declining populations, in many of the areas in which they occur. Some species are threatened with extinction, with numbers of some species in India having fallen by over 90 per cent in the last ten years.

In the United Arab Emirates, the most commonly-seen species is the Egyptian Vulture, Neophron percnopterus, whose numbers have declined sharply in recent years. As part of efforts to conserve the species, the Kalba Birds of Prey Centre, part of the Sharjah Environment and Protected Areas Authority, EPAA, has launched a captive-breeding programme, with six birds originally taken from the wild. Last year, a chick was successfully born and raised, in the first success of its type anywhere.

Another, rarer, species, a Lappet-faced Vulture, Torgos tracheliotos, was rescued by the Dubai Municipality’s Environment Department in the Al Marmoun desert reserve earlier this year. Nicknamed ‘Gareh-1’, the bird was successfully rehabilitated and was then fitted with a satellite-tracking device and released. It was then tracked on migration to Oman. Up to 20 or 25 vultures of different species are recorded in the reserve each year, especially in its southern and western areas..

Other work being undertaken in the UAE on endangered birds of prey includes a study by the Emirates Wildlife Society in collaboration with the Worldwide Fund for Nature, EWS-WWF, of the presence of the Arabian Eagle Owl, Bubo africanus milesi. A sub-species of the Spotted Eagle Owl, Bubo africanus, the Arabian Eagle Owl was first found in the UAE’s Hajar Mountains in 2017.

The Arabian Eagle Owl is also found in Yemen, Oman’s southern Dhofar region and the Asir mountains of south-west Saudi Arabia.

The owl survey work is being supported by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.

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