Development of desert safaris and implications on the natural safari parks

Bongani Ngwenya
THE United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a nation with a very innovative, rich and progressive history especially with regard to how it has progressed and transformed its desert environment into several ultra-modern metropolitan emirates in under 50 years.

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

With that said, they have managed to come up with many firsts in the world and history of humankind. Be it from Gold Bar Automated teller machines (ATM) to Hollywood style flying fire-fighters with jet engines attached to their back and having the tallest building in the world that is almost a kilometre high.

The innovative tourism case

With tourism projected to contribute more significantly than other sectors of industry in the UAE, innovation is always key hence the introduction of a concept such as the Sharjah Safari Park.

The Sharjah Safari Park has a large amount of animal species making it the largest safari park out of Africa.

For this to happen many years of extensive research trial and error eventually resulted in the successful opening of the park in February 2022.

Sharjah Safari Park (Photo credit: Gulf News)

With the successful opening of the Sharjah Safari Park, the traditional African safari and habitat for animals has been recreated in a different geographical and climatical location.

And so, a lot of questions have been raised on this setting and I will try attend to a few in this article.

What is a desert safari concept and zoo model?

The UAE is located in the middle east and the nation is composed of more than 80 percent desert.

It started off as a full-on desert but through the visionary leadership of its past, present and future leaders, continues to evolve, turning the desert to urban and metropolitan spaces.

It being a country comprised of desert landscape, there are many ecosystems and natural habitats in the desert.

The authorities then have taken it to task to regulate and conserve these areas through regulated desert safaris.

These come in many forms, be it camping, camel rides, quad biking, 4×4 dune bashing and falcon racing.

These activities strive in this setting.

A zoo on the other hand by definition is an establishment, which maintains a collection of wild animals, typically in a park or gardens, for study or display to the public.

These generally are located in the city or urban areas so they tend to be much smaller than conventional safari parks.

To what extent do these threaten local natural parks and wildlife tourism?

Wildlife tourism is a big business in Zimbabwe.

The country has eleven national parks and numerous game reserves spread across provinces.

These have managed to operate for hundreds of years and face challenges that arise from mainly poaching, which affects animal population and behaviour and potential revenue loss for the parks, droughts that lead to animal migration and certain economic challenges that are regional and global.

With all these challenges mentioned, the Government has managed to continue to combat these challenges resulting in the regeneration of the biggest concentration of wild white rhino in the world.

Zimbabwe carries more than a quarter of the African elephant population and has huge lion populations in the north western parts of the country.

So back to the question, does the opening of zoos and safari parks affect the local national and safari parks?

I do not think so, as I believe these do not carry the African safari experience that has existed from time immemorial and certain events that happen in the wild like the Serengeti migration.

Yes, the safari parks in the UAE may be in a convenient location for those in the surroundings but for those who would like the true African experience would have it nowhere else but in a Zimbabwean national park.

What strategies should local wildlife and tour operators take to consolidate their business?

With such developments unfolding, there is competition for the global tourism client.

However, I believe the local sector should look more into creating innovative and sustainable innovation and incubator programmes for the sector.

These can come in the form of creating an appetite in children who are completing school to learn more about wildlife conservation and regeneration.

This can be in the form of having introductory courses for guides, hunters and animal breeding.

These I believe will shed more light and create an appetite for future generations to know and understand the importance of preserving wildlife now and for future generations to come, as certain animal species can easily go extinct in our lifetime and all we will have are images and memories.

In closing, I would like to comment on sustainability and striking a balance between wildlife conservation and tourism profits.

For a wildlife operation to exist there has to be animals.

For these animals, there has to be habitat and for this habitat to exist there has to be co-existence between the animals and human beings as human populations have continuously grown and so has wildlife and that leads to human animal conflict.

Sustainability and conservation go hand-in-hand and slowly encroach into profitability, which brings us to the elephant in the room trophy hunting.

This has existed for hundreds of years as a sport and as a means for wildlife conservation.

Zimbabwe flag

A generous amount of earnings from trophy hunting in Zimbabwe is sent back into community coffers for community development, land generation, education programmes and to help look after this wildlife.

Due to tough economic times, globally others have opted to go the route of poaching wildlife, not understanding the chain effect of their actions.

When animals are poached, their population decreases and surviving animals usually migrate from that area sometimes after leaving a trail of destruction.

When the animals leave that area that then means that the area affected loses its purpose as a tourist attraction as there are no animals.

There not being any animal population means the park is left with unmanned structures as visits decline and there is not enough revenue generated to maintain and so leading to loss of jobs.

The hunting sector is regulated and has helped incredibly in conservation and sustainability of animal populations in Zimbabwe and the world over.

We need to protect our animals and their habitats for the present and future generations to come, they are part of our heritage.

Bongani Ngwenya is a Zimbabwe-born young businessman and partner in the Vestor Group, UAE, with experience in tourism and hunting safari operations.

He was also a panellist at TRANSPORT, WILDLIFE AND SAFARI SESSION discussing existing and potential areas for growth in these sectors for Zimbabwe through the UAE at the Dubai Expo 2020.

Feedback him on [email protected], Twitter: @gwej69

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