In an Asian desert, tribes want bird-loving hunters to fly away
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A curious two-way migration takes place this time each year: Tens of thousands of long-legged birds called bustards flock to Pakistan's deserts from Central Asia, while hundreds of leather-hooded falcons -- each with its own passport -- wing in on private jets with their wealthy Arab owners.
Gulf sheikhs are obsessed with the houbara bustard, which resembles a cross between a roadrunner and a pheasant. Its plump flesh is consumed as an aphrodisiac, although hunters say the real thrill lies in watching the feathers fly when falcons home in for the kill.
But it seems that the sheikhs and royals who have used Pakistan's deserts as a private hunting preserve since the 1960s have worn out their welcome among villagers, even though money earned from assisting a two-week hunting party can sustain everyone in a village for a year.
Tribesmen in the Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab Province recently fired on an advance team preparing for the arrival of Crown Prince Sheikh Sultan bin Hamadan al Nuhayyan, the grandson of the emir of the United Arab Emirates, and his royal falconers. There were no injuries and four tribesmen were arrested, according to authorities.
In a separate incident, in the Punjab's Ranjapur district, Pakistanis with guns, hand grenades, and rockets attacked a new police border post erected to protect the hunting parties. The police escaped unhurt, but several vehicles were destroyed.
Amid worries about further attacks, at least 100 police have been dispatched during the remainder of the hunting season, which lasts through March.
The violence followed escalating tension between the hunters and their Pakistani helpers, and Khosa and Bugti tribesmen who have been banned from shooting or trapping the game birds the past 30 years. Local residents say they are fed up with the behavior of the hunting parties.
Their recent complaints include that the sultan's security drove their SUVs through acres of ripening crops. Later, sparks from the guards' campfires set some fields ablaze, the residents said. The locals also said that bodyguards burst into their homes, confiscating guns and ammunition, and humiliated them.
Great flocks of houbara bustards winter in southern Afghanistan, and falconers will go to extravagant lengths to hunt them.
Although bustards once ranged from Morocco to Mongolia, their numbers are dwindling, according to Tehreen Khuwam, spokesperson for Pakistan's branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The past two years, coalition forces in Afghanistan have scattered the migratory birds. In fact, allied fighters sometimes stage raids against Al Qaeda remnants from the private airstrips that Arab falconers have constructed in remote scrub near the Pakistani-Afghan border.
Last spring, conservationists released 90 bustards that had been illegally trapped in Pakistan, and the UAE helped fund Houbara Bustard Research Centers in Baluchistan and the Punjab to promote sustainable hunting.
Yet the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that at least 8,000 bustards a year are smuggled out of Pakistan to the Gulf, where a live bird can fetch up to $1,000. Arabs spend an estimated $4 billion every year on falconry, and a pedigreed bird of prey can easily cost $100,000. They pamper falcons like pets and name them after warriors and heroes.
Houbara bustards are considered essential for training novice falcons to hunt, and docile birds raised in captivity can't match the wild bustards that bob and weave among the brambles.
A bustard can zigzag across the ground at 28 miles per hour and will break into flight only as a last resort, exposing its white markings to a falcon's talons. Since the game bird is wary, sometimes the chase can last for hours.
Sheikhs once tracked the bustard hunt from elaborate camel trains, but now most prefer to use high-tech satellite gadgets and follow the action in deluxe off-road vehicles.
Mukhtar Ahmed, president of the Houbara Foundation International, a conservation organization, said: "At least 30 percent of the migratory bustards get killed here in Pakistan, mostly at the hands of meat collectors and poachers."
He scoffed at the bustards' alleged aphrodisiac properties.
"Viagra is better and readily available, but it is bloodsport that gets the Arabs so excited," he said. "Bustards are an important way for Pakistan to raise revenue. We must encourage communities to look at wildlife as an asset to be conserved, not smuggled out to the black market."
