Satellite Tracking Houbara Bustards

undulata macqueenii) , the favoured prey of Arab falconers, migrates

from to reach the Arabian peninsula each winter. From mere curiosity

and speculation, the need to piece together a more comprehensive

picture of the houbara bustards’ movements has become essential

due to the continued decline in the houbara’s numbers. This decline

is believed to be as a result of destruction of their wintering

and breeding habitat, over trapping and over hunting. Now, pioneering

work by researchers from the Abu Dhabi based, National Avian Research

Center (NARC), has begun to unravel the mystery of the this species’

migration routes. Using sophisticated satellite tracking techniques,

NARC has ensured that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the first

country in the world to have tracked houbara bustard, both on

their northerly and southerly migrations. Their results are being

houbara bustard, weighing 1500g, was caught in the UAE. As houbara

are notoriously difficult to trap on their wintering grounds,

because they are few in number and not breeding, a falcon was

specially prepared to catch the houbara. Its talons had plastic

beads glued so their points and its beak was trimmed to prevent

injury to the houbara when it was caught in the air. Once captured,

a tiny satellite transmitter, weighing only 34g (of which only

3.5g of the weight was electronics and the rest a high rate lithium

battery) was fitted onto its back. Looking at the transmitter

it was difficult to imagine that this little device would really

be light enough to be carried easily by a flying houbara for a

couple of thousand kilometre and also powerful enough to send

a signal to three satellites orbiting 1000kms from the surface

of the earth which would relay the houbara’s position, to within

5km of the true point, to a data processing computer in France.

In addition, the manufacturers promised that the transmitter could

be programmed to turn themselves on and off to conserve battery

life and would relay the activity of the bird, the battery voltage

and the ambient temperature. After only 40 minutes capture the

researchers released the male houbara and hurried back to the

comfort of their air-conditioned research station where they dialled

into a modem link from Abu Dhabi to the data processing computer

in France, and began to down load data on the progress of the

were excited to see that after a few days apparently resting and

feeding in a relatively small area of Abu Dhabi, the houbara took

flight one night. They watched their computer screens as information

on the bird’s flight was continually updated. The bird traveled

initially along the coast of the UAE and Oman and then across

the Straits of Hormuz and into Iran where it stopped over for

approximately three weeks. Just as the NARC researchers were beginning

to think that the male would remain in Iran for the breeding season,

the bird once more took off to fly to the border region of Turkmenistan,

Kazakhstan and Uzbekhistan. Signals were received from this position

until the battery life ended. By the end of this migratory journey,

Kazakhstan which allowed NARC researchers to travel to Kazakhstan

in the springs of both 1995 and 1996 during the houbara breeding

season. Collaborating with researchers from the Institute of Zoology,

in Almaty, the teams was able to capture nine houbara in the east

houbara , indicated that they remained in Kazakhstan until the

month of September at which point they started migrating south.

What became clear from the data analysed in both years was that

the houbara from the east and the houbara from the west of Kazakhstan

take different migration routes and therefore end up on different

wintering grounds. Before the battery life expired, fixtures for

the eastern birds showed that four had moved into Afghanistan

and one into Iran. Of the western houbara, three migrated to Iraq

and one to western Iran. The short battery life of the transmitter

is a disappointment to the NARC researchers and it is hoped that

soon a battery will be developed to last for many months, preferably

a year, so that researchers can track the same houbara both to

and from their breeding grounds, before retrieving the transmitters.

concerning migrations of the houbara bustard. National Avian Research

Center’s researchers look forward to another year of satellite

tagging houbara and observing, via data displayed on their computer

screens, both northerly and southerly migration pathways. Results

of this new mapping programme are certain to influence conservation

measures for the Asian houbara bustard, helping to pinpoint breeding

grounds, wintering grounds and stop-off points so that they can

be effectively managed and protected. This technology based research

brings hope that the words of the UAE President, H.H. Sheikh Zayed,

quoted at the beginning of this article, will hold true in the