ABU DHABI // The first captive-bred houbara chick of the season hatched this week.
The International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC) said the Asian Houbara chick arrived on March 4.
Several thousand are expected to hatch this year at the fund’s Sheikh Khalifa Houbara Breeding Centre.
The Asian Houbara is facing extinction and is bred in captivity to be released to the wild or for regulated hunting.
“While this is the first of many thousands of chicks we will be breeding this year, it is still a special moment to savour,” said Mohammed Saleh Al Baidani, the director general of IFHC.
“It is one of the major milestones of the fund’s state-of-the-art breeding programme and gives us heart for our continuing endeavours to provide a sustainable future for the houbara.”
Due to Bedouin falconers hunting the houbara as a source of food in the UAE and other countries in the region, the number of bustards has been in decline.
Last year, the IFHC released nearly 6,000 birds ino the wild, more than 4,000 of them in the UAE, and bred more than 40,000.
The IFHC also aims to oversee international conservation projects that promote protection of the houbara’s habitats.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
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If 2008 was the year that rocked Detroit, 2019 will be when Motor City gives its annual car extravaganza a revamp that aims to move with the times.
A major change is that this week's North American International Auto Show will be the last to be held in January, after which the event will switch to June.
The new date, organisers said, will allow exhibitors to move vehicles and activities outside the Cobo Center's halls and into other city venues, unencumbered by cold January weather, exemplified this week by snow and ice.
In a market in which trends can easily be outpaced beyond one event, the need to do so was probably exacerbated by the decision of Germany's big three carmakers – BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi – to skip the auto show this year.
The show has long allowed car enthusiasts to sit behind the wheel of the latest models at the start of the calendar year but a more fluid car market in an online world has made sales less seasonal.
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