/ 16 February 1999

ISRAELI ORYX TO SENEGAL

ISRAEL is preparing to donate some 10 scimitar-horned oryx to Senegal from a ranch in the southern Negev desert. The oryx historically lived in the northern Saharan Africa as well as the south of the desert, between the Atlantic and the Nile. The UN Convention on migratory species says that the only African oryx gazelle population whose survival is probable is in the Sahelian regions of Chad, south of Ennedi, in the region of Ouadi Rime-Quadi — where the species has not be observed in the last 19 years. The animals which Tel Aviv is planning to send to Dakar are only meant for the Guembeul reserve, north of Senegal, and that of Ferlo, in the same region, recently turned into a wildlife reserve.