The Termit and Tin Touma National Reserve in Niger was created in 2012 to protect the endangered wildlife that live in the region. It covers about 38,600 square miles of desert and low mountains in the southern Sahara. The reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its biodiversity. The addax and dama gazelle […]
Tag: Sahara
Pharaoh Eagle Owl – Jubail area
I saw and photographed a Pharaoh Eagle Owl recently in the desert in the Eastern Province. Records suggest it is an uncommon bird in the Saudi Arabian deserts, although it is probably more common than records suggest as they are secretive and well camouflaged. The Pharaoh Eagle Owl is distributed throughout much of North Africa […]
Batty about Serengeti’s foxes
At the Grumeti Tented Camp in the Serengeti, we usually gathered at the open air lounge before first light for a cup of coffee and a rusk or muffin. This was a traditional meeting to work out where to go for the morning and discuss what we hoped to see. There were very few vehicles […]
Shot Egyptian vulture leads conservationists to bizarre black-market for bird parts
Around 11 AM on Thursday, 27 February 2014, Angoulou Enika was lying hidden in the tall grass on the side of a large water hole in the Sahel region of Niger. He was staying as quiet as he could while aiming his custom-made rifle at an Egyptian vulture which had landed nearby to drink from […]
86 percent of big animals in the Sahara Desert are extinct or endangered
Bigger than all of Brazil, among the harshest ecosystems on Earth, and largely undeveloped, one would expect that the Sahara desert would be a haven for desert wildlife. One would anticipate that big African animals—which are facing poaching and habitat loss in other parts of the world—would thrive in this vast wilderness. But a new […]
The Desert Sparrow Project
The Desert Sparrow (Passer simplex) is a small passerine found in North Africa and Central Asia. So far two subspecies have been described for the Sahara desert (P.s. simplex and P. s. saharae); the third subspecies, localized in areas of Irán, Turkmenistán and Uzbekistán, also known as Zarduny’s Sparrow (P. S. Zarudnyi), may be split […]