The Unfenced Desert Towards a strategy for eco ... - Nwrc.gov.sa

Box 3.1 Legislation of importance for wildlife conservation in Saudi Arabia
1966 Land Development Act: gives the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources (MAW)
responsibility over the regulation of land development activities. The act puts a limit on
the maximum acreage of land that may be utilised by individuals for agriculture.
1975 Agricultural and Veterinary Regulations: regulations controlling the introduction of plant
and animal species into Saudi Arabia.
1977 Forests and Pastures Act: committing the MAW to conserve pastures, public and urban
forests, and to regulate their use. Accordingly cutting trees and shrubs for private or
commercial use without a permit is prohibited and grazing is restricted to allocated sites.
1977 National Hunting law Decree Law No. 457: details areas with permanent hunting bans;
administered by the Ministry of Interior on advice from NCWCD.
1978 Royal Forest Decree Law No. 1392 (incorporating National Park Law of 1977): lays down
regulations for the protection of forests and wildlife; administered by the MAW.
1979 Water Resources Conservation Act: governing the control and use of water resources,
with priority use granted to human and animal needs and to agricultural and industrial
purposes; enforcement is the responsibility of MAW.
1986 Royal Decree No. M/22: responsibility for conservation of wildlife and the creation and
management of protected areas given to the National Commission for Wildlife
Conservation and Development under article 3(4).
1995 Wildlife Protected Area Act: formalising the process for the creation and management of
wildlife protected areas.
1996 Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES): national
regulation of wildlife trade.
proposed Draft Hema Law: intended to protect plant and animal species through the
restoration and support of the traditional hema system, recognising: strict natural hema,
plant hema, resource use hema and hunting hema.
proposed GCC Agreement on Wildlife Protection: draft agreement proposed by
NCWCD and which seeks to promote regional programmes for wildlife conservation,
including provisions for protected areas and the regulation of wildlife trade.
Recent trends in the management of protected areas in Saudi Arabia: A
tale of four reserves.
“Protected areas cannot be managed in isolation from their surroundings…especially in arid ecosystems in
which both resources and resource users have strongly fugitive properties.”
Graham Child and John Grainger (1990)
In the early stages of establishing its protected area network the NCWCD followed a
policy of strict protection, excluding all tended livestock and restricting human access to
enable the overgrazed landscapes to recover. It is possible to examine the NCWCD’s
changing approach to protected area creation and management by comparing four sites:
Al-Khunfah, Mahazat as-Sayd, `Uruq Bani Ma’arid, and Umm ar-Rimth. This section has
been developed from the ideas presented in Seddon et al. (1999).
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