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credit \u2013 Saharan Conservation<\/p>\n credit \u2013 Saharan Conservation<\/p>\n
Even as the final scimitar-horned oryx was felled for meat and leather on the Saharan dunes, a network of zoos, hunting reserves, and even a royal menagerie, guaranteed they would live on in captivity.<\/p>\n
Now, 9 years after these graceful antelope were first introduced back into the lands they once roamed, they have become one of the only species in history to go from being \u201cExtinct in the Wild\u201d to \u201cEndangered.\u201d<\/p>\n
With reintroduced populations in Chad, Tunisia, and Morocco, the wild oryx has risen in number from a whopping zero to around 600 animals, each bearing a remarkably-high amount of genetic diversity for a species once considered Extinct in the Wild.<\/p>\n
The secret to that genetic heritage was a small number of concerned, well-to-do citizens who took action during the antelope\u2019s downfall. These include a group of West Texas ranchers who learned in the 1970s that these animals were going extinct and decided to front up what must have been not-insubstantial funds to transfer some to Texas where they have settled brilliantly, and grown to a larger number<\/a> (some 12,000, it\u2019s estimated) than ever even existed in Africa.<\/p>\n Other benefactors include the far-sighted Englishman John Knowles, who established Britain\u2019s first zoological collection specifically for breeding endangered animals at the 400-acre estate of Marwell Hall. Here, despite their Saharan birth, the scimitar-horned oryx thrived in captivity.<\/p>\n Marwell is the keeper of the scimitar-horned oryx studbook, a sort of thoroughbred racehorse record for the oryx. As the animals shuffled around various zoos in Europe, the studbook ensured that inbreeding was avoided, and that it lineages with healthy and robust genetic heritage could be tracked.<\/p>\n Today, the studbook lists 3,295 animals in 182 zoos and institutions, and Marwell is now conducting some studies on the US-based oryx for the purpose of seeing how more genes could be introduced to the breeding pool.<\/p>\n Combined with those individuals in Texas and a small herd maintained by royal family of Abu Dhabi, the number and natural diversity meant it was only a matter of time before the species returned to the Sahara.<\/p>\n As it now has; and how. In March of 2016, in one of the world\u2019s largest solitary conservation landscapes called the Ouadi Rim\u00e9-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a cargo plane touched down in Chad with 25 specially-chosen oryx from what the BBC described as a \u201cWorld Herd\u201d\u2014individuals handpicked from the US, Europe, UK, and Abu Dhabi that would have the highest chance of surviving and breeding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first phase of the operation has been a success. We\u2019ve got the animals back into the wild, they\u2019re breeding, they are pretty secure,\u201d John Newby, who prepared a habitat assessment in the Republic of Ireland-sized Ouadi Rim\u00e9-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, told the BBC.<\/p>\n