The Sahara desert is looking ever more like its nickname, the sea of sands, and its native wildlife populations are in catastrophic decline. The wild addax pictured above are some of only 200 left in the world.
Faring even worse than the addax, the scimitar horned oryx – pictured below at Abu Dhabi's Sir Bani Yas Island reserve in the United Arab Emirates – is now extinct in the wild.
A recent report by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London looked at 14 local species and found that half of them are extinct in the region or confined to just 1 per cent of their normal range. Leopards and Saharan cheetahs join the addax and oryx among those species most at risk.
The troubled politics of the region makes it difficult to study wildlife, so conservationists are still uncertain about the cause of the decline, but suspect it is down to hunting. Thankfully, some countries are taking steps to remedy the situation. The addax in the top picture, for instance, reside in the new Termit and Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve in Niger, which also shelters some of the few remaining Saharan cheetahs.
Journal reference: Diversity and Distributions, DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12157
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
