Saber antelope
| Saber antelope | ||||||||||||
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Mother and calf |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Oryx dammah | ||||||||||||
| ( Cretzschmar , 1827) |
The saber antelope ( Oryx dammah ) is a species of oryx that was once native to the Sahara .
External features
It can be distinguished from the other species of the genus of the oryx by the long, strongly curved horns from 1 to 1.25 meters in length. The shoulder height is 120 centimeters, the weight up to 200 kilograms. The fur is white, partly brown in color.
behavior
The saber antelope feeds on grass, leaves and fruits and lives in herds of up to seventy animals. The gestation period is about 270 days, after which the female gives birth to a single cub.
distribution
As a pure desert animal, the saber antelope lived in the central Sahara, where large mammals are otherwise a rarity. While she once lived in large herds from Mauritania to Egypt , there were only small remaining deposits in the north of the states of Niger and Chad . Once the herds were said to have included up to a thousand antelopes. They wandered widely within the Sahara and could survive for several months without water.
Extermination in freedom
Uncontrolled hunting , most recently from cars and airplanes, completely destroyed the once common saber antelope in the wild. Since their habitat gave them no opportunity to seek hiding, the process of destruction was very quick. The saber antelope died out in Egypt as early as 1850. In the central Sahara, the herds survived for a few decades, but in the 1970s only small groups survived around the Termite massif in Niger and in the Ouadi Rimé – Ouadi Achim nature reserve in Chad . Extensive search expedition from 2001 to 2004 could no longer see any living saber antelope, so the IUCN had to change the status of the species to no longer occur in the wild. However, there has recently been an unconfirmed sighting of four saber antelopes in northern Niger.
Conservation in captivity
Paradoxically, the saber antelope, no longer found in the wild, is the second most common antelope kept in zoos ; only the stag goat antelope is represented more frequently. In 2005 there were at least 1,500 animals worldwide that were kept as part of breeding programs. In the United Arab Emirates there are believed to be over 4,000 animals in a private collection.
At the beginning of 2012, the population on Texan hunting farms had grown to at least 6,000 animals. The American animal rights organization " Friends of Animals " won a legal battle against the American nature conservation authority , which had issued an exemption for hunting the protected antelopes. As a result, hunting for the oryx in Texas became more difficult from April 2012. As a result, numerous farms have reduced their oryx stocks. In the US Congress there is a push, the Save Endangered Species Act of 2013 , to re-authorize hunting for saber antelopes in the US. In January 2014 the American congress removed the saber antelope from the "endangered species list". This made the hunt for the antelope easier again.
Release
Since the saber antelope was not destroyed by habitat destruction, but by hunting in the wild, reintroduction soon made sense. As early as 1986, ten animals were released into the wild in the south of Tunisia in a fenced area of the Bou Hedma National Park. By 1997 this herd had increased to 84 animals.
Animals are also kept in other fenced protected areas in Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal .
literature
- CA Spinage: The Natural History of Antelopes . Croom Helm, London 1986, ISBN 0-7099-4441-1
- Iain J. Gordon, J. Paul Gill: Reintroduction of Scimitar-horned oryx Oryx dammah to Bou-Hedma National Park, Tunisia . In: International Zoo Yearbook . Volume 32, No. 1 , January 1993, p. 69-73 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1748-1090.1993.tb03517.x .
Web links
- Oryx dammah in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2013. Posted by: Mallon & Kingswood, 2008. Accessed November 16, 2013.
Single receipts
- ↑ Spinage, p. 183
- ↑ a b Scimitar-horned Oryx on the IUCN List of Threatened Species, accessed November 16, 2013
- ↑ a b "Can hunting endangered animals save the species?" , Lara Logan, Max McClellan, CBS, Jan 29, 2012
- ↑ "In My View" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Priscilla Feral, President of Friends of Animals, Spring 2012
- ^ "Antelopes in Texas: Hunting ban threatens rare animals" , Martin Suter, 20 min, April 9, 2012
- ^ Save Endangered Species Act of 2013
- ↑ Approved - Three amigos exempted from endangered species list , Conor Harrison, January 18, 2014, Texas Hunting
