Mohammed donates ?25m to save wildlife

Fund will provide grants to conservation groups overlooked in environmental circles without discrimination on region or species.

A month-old scimitar-horned oryx sits next to an adult female. The species is extinct from the wild, but a herd of 4,000 lives on Sir Bani Yas Island.

ABU DHABI // World environmentalists yesterday hailed a ?25 million (Dh125m) fund created by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, to protect endangered animals and plants. Hundreds of environmentalists applauded the announcement at the World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Barcelona, Spain, organised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The initiative, which will start operating in January and is being personally funded by the Crown Prince , "will provide targeted grants to individual species' conservation initiatives, recognise leaders in the field and elevate the importance of species in the broader conservation debate", organisers said. "There was clapping throughout the presentation," said a member of the UAE delegation at the congress. "People were very excited."

Grants will be available to all conservation programmes without discrimination by species or region. Razan al Mubarak, managing director of the Emirates Wildlife Society, said in a speech to the WCC that a lack of funds was affecting the ability of conservationists to protect rare species. "Challenges to the cause are well documented and include the lack of funds, basic support for people on the front line and the focus of environmental debates moving towards climate change," she said.

The UAE delegation to the WCC included officials from the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), the Emirates Wildlife Society and the Tourism Development and Investment Company. Procedures for applying for grants will be posted on the fund's website (www.mbzspeciesconservation.org). The fund aims to respond to applicants within three months. The website says this is important for smaller organisations for whom "a huge amount of administration can negate the benefits of a contribution".

The fund will be headed by a board which will oversee its operations, including the development of policies and procedures, recognition of leaders in the field of species conservation, and the awarding of grants. Its chairman, Mohammed al Bowardi, who is also secretary general of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, vice chairman of Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi business development and investment company, and managing director of the EAD.

Majid al Mansouri, EAD's secretary general, is deputy chairman of the board. Members include Frédéric Launay, director of the Emirates Wildlife Society, and Mr Mubarak, the society's managing director. The board includes two foreigners, Russell Mittermeier, a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist who has written several books and 300 scientific papers, and Dr Mike Maunder, a distinguished plant conservationist. An increasing number of plants and animals are facing extinction due to pollution, poaching, habitat degradation and climate change. The latest version of the Red List of Threatened Species, a record of rare plants and animals maintained by IUCN, contains a larger number of threatened wildlife than ever before. Released this week in Barcelona, it shows that the number of threatened mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish has grown to 5,966, compared to 3,314 documented in a study carried out in 1996 and 1998. Of all known invertebrates, 2,496 were registered as threatened, compared to 1,891 a decade ago. The list includes 16,928 threatened plant species. The Red List includes 44,838 species divided into five categories of risk. The threatened category is the second-highest level of risk. At the top of the chart are animals and plants which are extinct or extinct in the wild. There are 457 animals in this category and 115 plants. The Red List is a work in progress and does not include all animal and life species in the planet. In the animal kingdom, mammals and amphibians appear to be most at risk. [e-mail]