Oryx back from brink of extinction

VISIT the African Plains exhibit at Dublin Zoo and you will see scimitar horned oryx, a creature classified as ‘extinct’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

In the current edition of Zoo Matters, Sandra Molloy outlines the history of this remarkable animal and the work zoos are doing to return it to the wild.

Oryxs are antelopes, a name derived from ‘anthos’, the Greek for flower, and ‘ops’ an eye; the members of this great browser and grazer family, like their distant relatives the deer and cattle, have big beautiful eyes. The scimitar-horned member of the tribe likes arid semi-desert places. A little over a metre high at the shoulder, it gets its name from the two magnificent horns, over a metre long. Curved backwards like curlew’s bills, they are thin and easily broken. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, the world’s first systematic naturalists, believed in the existence of unicorns. Was the mythical beast merely an oryx which had lost a horn? Unlike unicorns the oryx is not white all over. A brown scarf-like patch extends from the neck down the breast. The black eyes and crescent shaped mouth set off an elongated white visage. A brown pattern on the face resembles a ‘bindi’, the forehead pendant worn by Hindu women.

The white pelage is an adaptation to living in the desert. White objects reflect the sun’s rays, helping to keep body temperatures down, which is why people who live in hot climates tend to wear white garments. The hoofs are large and flat, so that the animal can walk in soft sand without sinking. Water is recycled within the body; an oryx, it’s claimed, can go for months without drinking. The tongue has its own sun-block protection.

Traditionally, this animal was harvested for its meat and skin. Eating the meagre desert grasses, it competed with domestic livestock, another reason why people persecuted it. Then, in the early 20th Century, European hunters arrived and the magnificent horns became sought-after trophies. Pressure on the persecuted animal ratcheted up when the Second World War erupted. As Erwin Rommel slogged it out with Britain’s Desert Rats in the notorious desert campaigns, displaced people killed wild creatures, including orxy, for food. A civil war, which broke out in Chad during the 1960s and continued intermittently ever since, sealed the oryx’s fate in that region. Climate change probably drove the last nail into its coffin. The annual rains failed to arrive in several years and drought killed people and animals alike. There hasn’t been a reliable sighting of an oryx in the wild for 15 years.

During the 1960s, the world’s leading zoos began a systematic breeding programme. Herds were assembled at various centres and, according to Sandra, over 1,500 animals were participating in the programme by 2005. A reserve was established in Tunisia in 1985 and the first zoo-bred animals were flown in from Britain. A Fota-bred one, carefully selected on the basis of its DNA, joined them in 2007. About 170 oryx now live in semi-wild habitat in four protected areas; conditions outside the reserves have not changed sufficiently to allow then to roam freely elsewhere. The behaviour of the zoo-bred animals appears to be normal and calves are being born. At the onset of the Arab Spring, civil strife erupted in Tunisia. So far political turbulence hasn’t disrupted the oryx programme but fingers are crossed.

Dublin Zoo’s three female oryxs were joined recently by a male, selected by the stud-book holder on the basis of its genetic diversity. It will soon, it’s hoped, begin to sire offspring. The little flock shares a large savannah-like habitat with giraffes, zebras and ostriches.

Keepers are optimistic that more calves from Ireland will be recruited to the restoration programme.

* The Rise of the Oryx by Sandra Molloy, Zoo Matters, Winter 2011/12.