An article in the local newspaper about the Goitered Gazelles, referring to a paper in PNAS (Proc. National Academy of Sciences) by Bar-Oz, G., Zeder, M., and Hole, F. (April 2011), suggested that this species was “extirpated...in northern Levant”. Not quite true. Here's a photo of one that I took in 2002.
There still are a few Gazella subguttarosa in Jordan and adjacent parts of Syria and Saudi Arabia. I had reliable reports of a few along the Syrian-Jordanian border near Iraq, and also along the SE border of Jordan with Saudi Arabia—maybe a few dozen in the former location and no more than a handful in the latter. And there are Dorcas gazelles, perhaps 100 or so, along the border with Israel in Wadi Araba, south of the Dead Sea. The reason these few remnants of former widespread species persist is that these border areas are heavily defended and land-mined. The Bedouins know better than to try to graze their livestock there; consequently, the habitat is the best in the country. And no one hunts there, except the Badia Patrol (a camel-mounted border patrol force), who occasionally serve gazelle to their guests as a special treat.
In 2005, Jordan got $161 million in a suit against Iraq for environmental damages caused by the 1990 Gulf War, the funds to be dedicated for restoration of 7.1 million hectares of arid and semi-arid rangeland. The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature has some of the money to rejuvenate its captive breeding program (it was successful for Arabian oryx, but decidedly not for gazelles) and to establish a new, large nature reserve near the last known goitered gazelle population area.
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