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

Chapter 1
“Sound eco-tourism, if it is to move beyond small individual projects and become a set of
principles and practises on which tourism is based, will require careful planning and
implementation.”
Martha Honey (1999)
Introduction
It is hard to grasp the speed and scale of changes that have taken place within the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the last 50 years. The revenue generated by the exploitation
of oil fields that amount to around a third of the world’s proven reserves has enabled
rapid and sustained expansion of infrastructure and services in a land that in the early
part of last century comprised a series of warring sheikhdoms. Traditional lifestyles, such
as nomadic pastoralism, which had eked subsistence livelihoods out of ephemeral and
patchy natural resources, have changed also. The application of modern technology has
freed agriculture from regulation by natural variation in rainfall and plant growth, and
together with the breakdown of tribal grazing lands has allowed the over-exploitation of
desert vegetation. The new-found ability to locate and tap ancient water stores has
allowed the growing of new crops, but sometimes at the costs of soil degradation. The
use of all-terrain vehicles and automatic weapons has vastly increased the impact of
hunters on wildlife, enabling them to push deep into once remote regions, and to kill
many animals in a short period of time. A rapidly expanding human population has
placed increased demands on natural resources and habitats. All these factors have
combined to reduce the numbers, diversity, range and habitat of native species of plants
and animals.
These detrimental changes to the natural environment have not gone unnoticed,
and although the concept of conserving areas of land for special use is thousands of
years old in Arabia, true wildlife protected areas have been in existence in Saudi Arabia
only since the mid 1980s. The National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and
Development was created in 1986 to oversee the creation and management of a network
of protected areas to conserve native wildlife. The urgency of the task facing the
NCWCD lead to the adoption of a preservationist approach to protected area
establishment during its first decade of operation. Large tracts of land were set aside
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