Oryx to be released into the wild, in Jordan.

24/12/2006 00:00:00 June 2007. The Coordinating Committee for Conservation of Arabian Oryx recently held its third meeting in Jordan.

It was decided to develop the recommendation to release Arabian oryx in the area of Rum in Jordan, with funding from the UAE and in cooperation with Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN). Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD) will be providing 20 individual oryx to this release.

Extinct in the wild
In the early 1960s, the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan noticed the rapidly diminishing numbers of Arabian Oryx, and so arranged for the capture of some of the remaining wild animals to form the nucleus of a captive breeding programme. It is worthwhile to note that uncontrolled hunting and capture were the major reasons the oryx originally became extinct in the wild by 1972.