Trophy and Sport Hunting: Page 3 Endangered Species Handbook

Persecution and Hunting

Trophy and Sport Hunting: Page 3

The vast Sahara has been the scene of similar hunts. Scimitar-horned Oryx (Oryx dammah) originally had a wide range in arid grasslands from Morocco and Senegal east to Egypt and the Sudan. In historic times, herds of 100 animals were commonly seen, and during wet season migrations, they traveled in groups of 1,000 animals or more. Their white and brown coloration allowed them to blend into the desert, and they were admired for their extremely long, back-curving horns. Their populations and range gradually shrank with hunting, overgrazing and agricultural encroachment on natural grasslands; the species disappeared from Egypt and Senegal in the 1850s. In the 1970s there were still an estimated 6,000 of these spectacular animals in the southern Sahara (Nowak 1999). The Haddad tribe of northern Chad centered their way of life around hunting these oryx, driving them into nets and killing them for their meat (Simon 1995).

Although traditional hunting made inroads into Scimitar-horned Oryx populations, the use of four-wheel-drive vehicles and modern firearms by prospectors and military personnel within the past 30 years drove the species to near extinction (Simon 1995). Groups of wealthy Middle Eastern hunters arrived with all-terrain vehicles and automatic rifles, eliminating these animals from most of their range. Chad's Ouadi Rime-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve became one of their only refuges by the 1970s, but the outbreak of war between that government's forces and Libyan-backed rebels in 1978 brought about an unregulated slaughter of the last population of Scimitar-horned Oryx within the reserve, reducing them to only a few hundred animals (Simon 1995). In an attempt to reintroduce these majestic antelope to their original range, 41 were captured in western Chad in 1966 and placed in captivity (Simon 1995). Some 500 of these oryx are part of the American Zoo Association's Species Survival Plan, and another 700 are in other zoos; an unknown number are in ranched herds, especially in Texas (Nowak 1999). A small number of Scimitar-horned Oryx were released into a national park in Tunisia in 1991 (Simon 1995), and others may be released in Niger (Nowak 1999). The IUCN listed this species as Critical in 1996, Extinct in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Senegal, and Western Sahara, and Probably Extinct in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Sudan. The 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species listed the Scimitar-horned Oryx as Extinct in the wild.

The Addax (Addax nasomaculatus), a desert antelope which once ranged from Western Sahara and Mauritania to Egypt and Sudan, is now nearly extinct in the wild as a result of heavy hunting combined with loss of its grassland and shrubland habitat to agriculture and competition with livestock. Perfectly adapted to life in the desert, Addax are able to spend their lives without drinking water, deriving moisture from plants on which they feed (Nowak 1999). Instead of the long, arched horns of the Scimitar-horned Oryx, the Addax has horns that grow outward, then bend inward and upward. A stocky antelope that is not able to run quickly enough to flee men on horses, it has been easy prey for hunters and feral dogs. In recent years, remnant populations literally have been run to death by tourists in four-wheel-drive vehicles who pursue them until the animals fall dead in the sand (Nowak 1999). A herd in northeastern Niger was reduced to 50 to 200 animals when, according to some reports, they were wiped out by hunting. Fewer than 200 remained in north-central Chad, and another 50 along the border of Mali and eastern Mauritania in 1994 (Nowak 1999). The 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals listed the Addax as Endangered, Extinct in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and probably Sudan. The 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species upgraded its status to Critical. A small reintroduced population survives in Tunisia, but the wild population is at risk of disappearing altogether. More than 400 animals are in captivity, including a herd in a large dryland safari park in Texas called Fossil Rim.

Other Saharan animals have been ruthlessly pursued. Pelzeln's Gazelle (Gazella dorcas pelzelni) have been pushed to Vulnerable status by hunting. They are listed on the US Endangered Species Act. The Slender-horned Gazelle (Gazella leptoceros), native to North Africa, is now endangered throughout its range, according to the 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The hunting of these desert animals by men in all-terrain vehicles, some armed with machine guns, reached such heights in the 1970s that they nearly became extinct, and their status has not improved in the intervening years. The endangered Dama Gazelle (Gazella dama), also a heavily hunted species, is extinct in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Western Sahara; it has been reintroduced into Senegal, and populations are now confined to Chad, Mali, Niger and Sudan (Baillie and Groombridge 1996). Cuvier's Gazelle (Gazella cuvieri), another North African species, is also extinct in the Western Sahara and survives in endangered populations in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, according to the IUCN. In some cases, antelope and gazelles have been pursued by hunters in helicopters who shoot at them with rockets, a method also used to kill African Elephants in Chad, where the last Greater Kudus (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) were destroyed in 1976 (Anon. 1977).