The Wadi Wuraiyah National Park has been shut down to prepare it and properly protect the safety of visitors and wildlife.
A national park on the east coast of the UAE has shut down, and will remain closed for possibly two years, the Emirates Wildlife Society and World Wide Fund for Nature (EWS-WWF) have announced.
The EWS-WWF made the announcement at a Press conference at their newly constructed outpost at the park near Fujairah on Tuesday morning, where Shaikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, Crown Prince of Fujairah, spoke.
The Wadi Wuraiyah National Park, about 190km from Dubai, is the first national park in the UAE. The wadi encompasses one of the few permanent freshwater sources in the UAE and is home to many rare plants and animals. The park has been shut down to “prepare it and properly protect the safety of visitors and wildlife”, the EWS-WWF said. Public safety is a significant concern inside the park because of the lack of visitor facilities.
When Khaleej Times visited the park, there were considerable traces of litter — glass bottles, plastic bags and graffiti on the rocks. Names of people were engraved or spray-painted in different areas too.
“As we move into the future, we must protect our natural heritage for the good of our people. The park is a living and precious symbol of our respect for our past and our hopes for the future. As such, I have directed Fujairah Municipality and the EWS-WWF to establish and manage Wadi Wuraiyah National Park as a regional model for nature conservation,” said Shaikh Mohammed bin Hamad.
The Crown Prince indicated that although much progress had been made in conserving the wadi, he looked forward to continued and effective conservation efforts.
The park, a range in the Hajar Mountains, is a 129sqkm catchment area with permanent freshwater sources, because of which it has been home to local communities for more than two millennia. A geologist’s delight, the Wadi also has the only waterfall of the UAE. It hosts 29 heritage sites from pre-Islamic tombs to Bedouin settlements from the early 1980s.
When the park reopens, it will sport a new look. Appropriate infrastructure, including an information space for visitors, will be established to ensure a rewarding public experience, and protect the environmentally sensitive areas inside the park.
Ida Tillisch, Director-General of the EWS-WWF, in her speech spoke of the need of Wadi Wuraiyah and the nature around us “to remind us of the importance and fragility of life.”
“Wadi Wuraiyah National Park is a special place. We know that the presence of permanent freshwater in an arid region such as this fosters life. What many of us forget is that Wadi Wuraiyah is also remote, rugged, and difficult to access. When we place camera traps inside the wadi, we hike as many as six hours in one direction to reach a suitable location.”
It was in the wadi in July this year that a rare dragonfly was discovered and photographed — a male of the species called Urothemis thomasi. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, this species was previously sighted at only eight sites in Oman and has not been recorded anywhere since 1957. The species, new to the UAE, was thought to be extinct.
