title: Reintroducing antelopes into arid areas: lessons learnt from the oryx in Saudi Arabia.
abstract: We focus on constraints faced by antelopes reintroductions in arid environments, and propose keys to enhance their success, using the oryx project in Saudi Arabia as example: (1) Monitoring and management of reintroduced populations appear more important than the number of released animals; (2) Because of the low accuracy of population size estimators, we recommend to implement a continuous monitoring and to use several estimators to assess the reintroduced population size; (3) Reintroduction schedule should take into account the unpredictability of food resources in arid environments; (4) The re-establishment of desert antelopes depends as a priority on the enforcement of regulations to avoid poaching.
authors.affiliation: N.W.R.C/N.C.W.C.D, P.O. Box 1086, Taif, Saudi Arabia. Mesochina@nwrc-sa.org
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mésochina
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bedin
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ostrowski
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000866:Antelopes / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D003889:Desert Climate; D004777:Environment; D008954:Models, Biological; D011156:Population Density; D012529:Saudi Arabia; D013045:Species Specificity; D013997:Time Factors