Egypt

“You used to be able to see gazelles near the pyramids. Gazelles were so common that people never thought that they would disappear.”

“A wave of tourism development is destroying the shoreline at Lake Qarun [in the Fayoum area], animal and bird habitats are being ruined and the water is being severely polluted. Lake Qarun's most prominent recent tourist development is Byoum, a massive complex of more than 120 villas, a five-star hotel and hunting lodge.”

“Golden orioles are a cash crop, sold to middlemen for freezing and resale in the Persian Gulf states...At prime sites where hunters congregate by the dozens, a single hunter can kill more than 50 orioles in one day.”

“Most Egyptian coastal towns have bird markets where a quail can be bought for two dollars, a turtledove for five, an oriole for three, and small birds for pennies.”

“The saker [falcon] is so rare that not more than a dozen or two are captured in any given year, but the size of the jackpot (a good saker can fetch over $35,000, a peregrine over $15,000) entices hundreds of hunters into the desert for weeks at a time.”

“Less than a century ago, it was common to see vultures flying over Cairo and nesting in some of the city's buildings. Today, the vulture population in Egypt is drasti- cally declining.”

“The striped hyena is still present in some parts of Egypt, but the population is believed to be continuously declining...The striped hyena was formerly found along the margins of the Nile Delta and Nila Valley and commonly entered towns searching for food.”

“Although the Dorcas gazelle used to be widespread in both the Eastern and Western deserts and Sinai, today its population, which...is believed to number roughly 1000, is mostly scattered in the Eastern Desert and South Sinai.”

“It is believed that shark populations have decreased by up to 80 percent since the 1970s...Most agree that the real culprit is illegal fishing.”

“The indiscriminate and unsustainable killing of migrant birds in North Africa has become an issue of public concern...Millions of birds are caught each autumn as they leave Europe and Asia for their wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“Maltese hunters were seen and caught with two Lappet-faced Vultures and other birds at Bir Shalatin. If they went so far, sooner or later the hunters will reach Gebel Elba illegally, with the help of local desert guides. The insufficient funding of the [environmental authorities] does not allow its rangers to undertake deep desert patrolling.”

The country's leading daily Al-Masry Al-Youm states: “Despite being designated as natural protectorates, a number, if not all, of these protectorates are themselves threatened. Typically underfunded, understaffed and confronted with numerous threats, these protectorates are subjected to destruction possibly beyond repair.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the Egyptian vulture as globally endangered, citing rapid population declines in India, Europe, and throughout its range in Africa.

“The marbled duck and white-headed duck have both disappeared during the past century, along with the famous sacred ibis. Species such as the great crested grebe, coot, and white-tailed sea eagle were known to breed in the Delta wetlands, but have all stopped doing so.”