ERWDA Camp:

A classroom in the desert... (click for bigger picture)

All this, peppered with the excitement of scaling the dunes, camping and barbecuing, light-hearted banter (mimicking teachers!), lively debates on conservation issues, humour and bonhomie, have made the learning and nature sensitisation process a joyous one.

Each year – February to April and September to November -- the Communications and Education Department of ERWDA, under its environmental awareness teaching programme, organises desert and marine ecology field trips (two-day and one-day trips) for senior schools, both government and private. The aim is to contribute to the students’ and teachers’ understanding of environmental and wildlife issues and to cover aspects of the biology and geography curricula in an exciting and practical way.

Participants in the desert collecting samples... learning on site (click for bigger picture)

Helping students acquire a set of values and feelings for the environment; motivating them to actively participate in environmental improvement and protection; assisting them to acquire skills that may be useful in other walks of life; and providing them research opportunities (often alongside ERWDA’s field researchers), are the finer objectives. Some 16 Abu Dhabi schools (9 government and 7 private) have participated in the camps this year.

The author joins 20 students accompanied by five teachers for an overnight desert ecology camp, the last one for this season. It is designed and conducted by Theri Bailey, environmental awareness officer, Communications and Education Department, ERWDA.

We get here on the morning of 4th April. The tents are pitched and Theri jokingly welcomes us to our five star accommodation! We lay out bricks to frame the campfire, which will be lit at night, and are all set for the desert ecology field sessions to start. But first, an introductory classroom session.

In the classroom
It isn’t easy to capture the interest of restless 14 to15 - year olds in serious talk, but Theri manages beautifully as she plays facilitator rather than lecturer, touching upon subjects and getting the boys to think for themselves and react. Besides, there is an air of anticipation because everyone is aware that there is wildlife present – strange shuffling sounds emanate from a couple of cartons in the corner and, outdoors, the houbara bustard thrills us with its tireless prancing.

What does ERWDA’S logo (hands encircling oryx, falcon and shark) communicate to you, questions Theri. There are apt responses, of course; but there’s one funny one that draws forth peals of

Gayatri Raghava, teacher of geography, holding a spiny-tailed lizard {click for a bigger picture}

laughter - ‘recycling wildlife.’ Recycling, it seems, is recognised as the panacea of all environmental ailments!
We course through ERWDA’S mission, conservation programmes (such as on bustards and falcons), what makes a desert a desert, associated flora and fauna, their adaptations to the arid environment, threats they face and why. And we dwell on issues such as how hunters can be conservationists, the way a small brown bird (the houbara) has helped establish scientific links between the UAE and China, why it is easier to release herbivores into the wild than carnivores, and how conservation and animal management are also about people management.

Its time now to meet our wild mates in the cartons. The Ethiopian hedgehog named Eric, just curls up into a cuddly ball when held.

Theri Bailey with an Ethiopian hedgehog

Let him go and he darts under the nearest couch. He was bought in a souq by an animal lover and presented to ERWDA for safekeeping. The discussion turns to what action children can take when they spot wild species in pet shops (three red fox pups, it seems, have been seen in a souq just the other day).

So, what can we do? Put pressure on ERWDA or another authority; write to the newspapers; and never buy wild animals to keep as pets, as this would only encourage the trade.

Our next guest is a dhub (local name). This spiny-tailed lizard has injured its tail and was found by a cleaner. He will go to the vet after we have, with utmost care, examined him. Superficially, he appears fierce, but he is really a harmless creature - a herbivore with no sharp teeth. Under Theri’s watchful eye, we take turns in holding him. The boys are fascinated, to say the least.

Meanwhile, outside, the houbara seems to be taking a break from his display ritual.

The houbara bustard... dancing to new tunes

To get him to start again Theri just steps outside and he responds. He does this because he is captive bred and, as a new born, the first salient, moving object he saw was human. We learn how Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz, in 1935, conducted experiments on the phenomenon called ‘imprinting,’ a specialised form of learning. Lorenz demonstrated the phenomenon by appearing before newly hatched mallard ducklings and imitating a mother duck’s quacking sounds, upon which the young birds regarded him as their mother and followed him around. If the first object they saw is a bright red ball, they’d follow that around as well! Imprinting, Lorenz found, also affected the young bird’s later behaviour, including its sexual preferences as an adult.

The desert by day
We break for lunch and then brace ourselves for the sunny outdoors. In the hours that follow we will survey vegetation and substrate and set traps. We have made certain hypotheses, which we want to test. For instance, there is greater plant species diversity inside the campus than outside.

But before we start there are certain ground rules we must observe : keep our voices low, not use mobile phones, not go near breeding houbara bustards, not litter, handle animals very gently (without pressure), not kill any living creature, and not pull out excess vegetation as samples. Rules governing our behaviour and attitudes towards nature are important, and these are impressed upon us time and again.

Carrying quadrates, a trundle wheel (it measures distance), clipboards, bags (for plants) and containers (for soil) we traverse a sample area in groups,

Trundle-wheel, clipboard, tape... (click for bigger picture)

collecting soil and vegetation specimens and noting our observations. We then proceed to another area to set traps – rodent traps (digestive biscuit crumbs are kept inside as temptations) and pitfall traps (cups into which beetles may fall). The sun blazes, yet we find a lizard or two sunning itself. A dhub crouches on scrub. A blue-headed agamid (a small lizard, blue on top and with a dappled orange and cream tail) darts around in a clump of shrubs, trying to hide as Theri tries to catch it, with little success. A white-spotted sand lizard eyes us warily. We also discover a few animal burrows.

How can we miss out the birds? Pairs of great grey shrike and ringed plover have taken up residence in the compound, and the latter have even bred. We spot them frequently as we move around. Besides, there are crag martins (migratory swallows) on their annual visit to the campus.

The ghaf grove
As evening approaches, we head out towards a grove of ghaf trees outside the campus, ploughing our way through loose sand, clambering over dunes and slithering down their slopes. Imagine the pleasure in studying desert landforms sitting in the midst of dunes!

As the sun sets we settle down under a ghaf tree to the strains

Under ghaf trees... making learning fun (click for bigger picture)

of twittering sparrows and talk about how the dunes around us have come to be – the winds lifting up sand grains and dropping them against an obstacle to form the crescent shaped mounds (barchans) or long ridges (seifs).

We examine the micro-habitat under the ghaf tree. This naturally growing tree of the Arabian desert can tolerate prolonged drought and high salinity levels. We notice how the sand below is littered with bone fragments dropped by raptors and other birds of prey that have perched on the tree and feasted. The straight lower edge of the canopy tells us that camels routinely graze this (and other ghafs around us), the straight line of branches and leaves being as high as they can reach.

Soon, it’s barbecue time! We are tired and hungry, so quite welcome the fact that the food is cooked for us and we don’t have to do it ourselves. There are many hours to go before we turn in for the night because we still have our after dark foray into the desert to look forward to. A group of boys come racing up. “We’ve seen a red scorpion!” They had spotted one and bolted.

The desert by night
The military truck (called unimog) equipped with eight gears is our transport for the night vigil. We pile in, switch the spotlights on and drive on to the gravel plain of a neighbouring valley. The terrain is all mounds and valleys so we get knocked around atop the unimog, which in itself is quite an adventure. Lit up in the truck’s intensely high beam, desert shrubs and grass clumps look quite spectacular, rising out of the gravel flats and low dunes that are shrouded in darkness. It is disappointing, however, that we are able to spot very little wildlife – only a tiny gerbil that hops across our track, a gecko near some shubs, and a desert wheatear in flight.

Our group includes five students who have been on a similar camp last

Theri with a spiny tailed lizard

year and they tell us that, on their earlier trip, they had seen a red fox, cape hare and quite a few lizard species. Have we been plain unlucky? Is it because of the unimog’s blazing lights and thunderous passage? Or is wildlife declining?

The desert by (another) day
The next day we are up early and set out to collect the traps. To our excitement some have closed, and there are beetles in pitfall traps. We note the precise location of each trap because animals must be released on the same spot. As Theri says, “Releasing a creature even a short distance away from where it is caught, is like putting it in Australia! It will never be able to find its way home.”

We will identify the animals trapped in our lab sessions a little later, but first we need to undertake vegetation and soil sampling outside the compound.

There is a dramatic decline in vegetation cover outside. We do our job of collecting specimens anyway. Camels graze in the distance and we wonder what they are grazing on because there’s virtually nothing left. We suspect they must longingly eye the research station’s greenery! On this desolate gravel plain we have a fascinating encounter with a toad-headed agamid, which Theri manages to catch. He is so beautifully camouflaged with the gravel that it must surely take a falcon’s eye to spot him. We take turns in holding him (ever so carefully). His underside is white and when we turn him over he becomes absolutely still – playing dead! We release him and he scampers away.

In the lab
It’s time now for the last, vital, part of our desert ecology field trip – laboratory sessions on animals and plants and learning how to identify them with the aid of simple keys.

Gayatri, sieving sand samples to analyse desert soil... in the lab {Click for a bigger picture}

Here’s what we trapped :

• two gerbils (inside compound) and two more (outside, in traps fixed for us by Theri’s colleague because we are short of time);
• an urchin beetle;
• a domino beetle and lots of ants.

This is a great fun session and we find ourselves totally absorbed in the process of distinguishing between jerboas, gerbils and jirds. And telling a Baluchistan gerbil from a Cheesman’s, and a Libyan jird from a Sundervall’s by looking at colours, tails, limbs, whiskers, ears, toes…..and trying to figure out possible reasons for the features.

The insect, vegetation and soil analysis is interesting too, especially weighing the soil samples and sieving them through six containers that retain various grades, the finest at the bottom.

Data recorded will now be analysed in school labs under the guidance of teachers and a report prepared to document results. About our hypotheses, we know that we are right about vegetation being richer inside the compound, but scientific proof is required.

Eric the hedgehog {Click for a bigger picture}

That will come once data is analysed in school.

At the end
The camp closes with a debriefing session. Everyone seems delighted with the field trip and would like it to be longer so they needn’t rush through things and get into a little more detail. Not sighting animals during the ‘night spotting’ causes deep concern about dwindling wildlife.

There's one last question from Theri: would anyone be interested in field research? Almost a quarter of the group raised their hands.

There is no finer way to sensitise youth to nature - its beauty, susceptibility, and struggle for survival - than such interactive field trips that bring together students, teachers and scientists in the natural environment. And it is an individual so sensitised that can best appreciate, practise, and spread the message of, natural resources conservation. Home | Author's Note | List of Articles | EnviroLinks | Our Friends | What's New | Contact Us |