In 1962, Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz warned people about the possibility of the extinction of migratory quail birds coming to Egypt in his famous novel Al-Samman wal-Kharif (Autumn Quail).
In this book, Mahfouz compared the extinction of the idealism of the novel’s hero to flocks of quail going to their doom each year as they pass over Egypt.
Every year in September, quail and another 240 kinds of migratory birds fly from Europe to Africa passing through Egypt looking for warmer areas and hoping to return by the end of the season to their original habitats. However, in Egypt, quail are often eaten for food, and their decreasing numbers are putting them at risk of extinction.
Weak supervision and inspection and being scattered in numerous areas increase the chances of poaching and hunting migratory birds. This is despite Egypt’s commitment to international agreements to preserve the birds, as the country is the second most important route for migratory birds worldwide.
Egypt ranks as the first Arab country in terms of hunting migratory birds, followed by Libya and then Tunisia, according to a BirdLife International report for 2021. Egypt also ranks second in the Mediterranean basin in terms of hunting migratory birds, preceded by Italy and followed by Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus. The report ranks Egypt as the most dangerous place for migratory birds in the Mediterranean Basin.
Birdlife International is a global partnership of NGOs that strives to conserve birds and their habitats.
There are 34 sites for birds coming from Europe and Asia in Egypt, among them 15 important sites for migratory birds, with one of them being the Borollos Reserve. It is over 200 km from Cairo to Lake Borollos or about three hours by car. The present writers were accompanied by an environmental activist who preferred to remain anonymous. This person worked as our guide, providing us with information about the area and the hunting there.
We met our first bird hunter on the Baltim shore overlooking the Mediterranean. There were hunters there with five metre nets that violate hunting regulations.
Thabet Abu Zaid is a man in his sixties who inherited his hunting hobby from his father and owns a 1,000 square metre piece of land overlooking the sea where he puts his nets during the hunting season. He has permission to do so from the Border Guard Department, for which he pays LE100 ($5) for the season and then sets up the nets no more than 200 m from the shore. According to Thabet, most fishermen do not adhere to this distance, which was approved by the Ministry of Environment in the Official Gazette in September 2021.
Thabet explained how he hunts migratory birds, among them quail. “I used to catch around 200 birds a day, but now is the beginning of the season and I catch 50 quail a day. After that either I catch only one or sometimes none. People who use acoustic devices can catch dozens of birds,” he said.
There is a lack of supervision in the use of these devices, which users put on the hills and not on the shore line. The annual hunting decree issued by the Ministry of Environment at the beginning of the season determines the distance that nets can be from the seashore. It used to be 500 m and then changed to 200 m in 2021.
The ministry justifies the amendment by saying that the distance in some places was within the range of lakes or residential areas. It has also been running a scientific study in cooperation with Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE), a local partner of BirdLife International, to determine the best distance and regulations for hunting.
ACOUSTIC DEVICES: The annual decree to regulate hunting issued by the ministry prohibits using ultrasound devices in hunting quail and other birds, which is why poachers fail to obtain official permits.
One of the hunters and the environmental specialist we interviewed said that hunting using such devices will eventually contribute to the extinction of the birds, among them quail.
The devices mimic the sounds of migratory birds, attracting them to where they are then trapped in gum-covered trees. The birds stay stuck for hours and may die before they are collected. They are then sold for around LE10 each to village traders like the one in the Mastoura village we visited, where there are an estimated 4,000 poachers in this village of 15,000 people. From there, the birds are sold locally or exported to the Gulf countries.
The Chinese-made devices contain 182 different bird sounds, and hundreds more can be downloaded. Although they are forbidden, they can be easily bought on e-marketing Websites like Amazon and Alibaba at prices ranging between LE2,000 and LE6,000.
We headed to the Mastoura village, which lies 48 km from the Baltim seashore, searching the alleys between the small white brick houses for a poacher in his 30s called Shaalan, a pseudonym, who sells and repairs these devices. He said that he catches around 300 different birds a day, including quail, ducks, pintails, garganeys, and greenfinches, and he offered to sell us a falcon, a bird that the Ministry of Environment has banned from hunting.
Shaalan poaches falcons from time to time, the last being in 2019, when he sold them for LE267,000 ($14,800), dividing the money among 10 partners who had stayed in the desert with their families for three months.
You cannot go to Mastoura without visiting the house of “the prince of migratory birds”, a trader in his 60s called Mohamed Al-Fallah. He has been a hunter for 54 years and describes himself as the “most important migratory bird trader in Egypt”.
Birds chirp inside cages hanging on the front of his house, and inside there is a wall of pictures of Al-Fallah with the peregrine falcons he owned earlier. Behind that there is a room with large refrigerators stacked with frozen birds. “There is no such thing as extinction. If God created something, it will never go extinct. God endowed us with the birds,” Al-Fallah said.
European turtle doves, orioles, and desert warblers have the highest demand in the Gulf, according to Al-Fallah, and prices can reach up to LE120 for doves, whereas orioles are sold for LE35.
Migratory quail numbers have also decreased in the North Sinai region, with about 2.5 million birds being hunted annually, specifically at Lake Bardawil. Continuing the current hunting practices will contribute to the extinction of the birds in Egypt, according to a study by Omar Atom, a professor of biology at Indiana University in the US.
The latest “Red List” report on threatened species in Europe shows that one in five bird species on the continent is heading for extinction and 344 have already disappeared, according to an analysis by BirdLife International.
The Ministry of Environment permits the hunting of 21 kinds of migratory birds in Egypt, according to Ayman Hamada, head of the Department of Biodiversity at the ministry, justifying this by pointing to two important criteria. The first is the status of the species according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the second is whether a given species can tolerate hunting without this affecting its numbers or ability to continue breeding and maintain its survival.
He said that quail in Egypt were not threatened and could bear a certain amount of hunting.
BIRD BUSINESS: According to a study by the ministry, some 1.5 million quail are hunted in the Borollos Nature Reserve alone during the three months of the hunting season, with an annual return of LE5,664,000.
Exporting the birds to the Gulf countries is one of the reasons behind the intensity of the hunting, said environmentalist and founder of Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE) Sherif Bahaaeddin, who added that this started ten years ago when the birds began to be frozen for export to these countries.
Egypt resumed exporting local poultry in October 2020, following the requirement that the birds should be domestic and not migratory. Law 4/1994 prohibits the export, import, or trade in migratory birds, live or dead, in whole, cut in parts, or in the form of derivatives.
But Salwa Al-Halawani, a researcher at BirdLife International, said that the “birds are exported frozen for eating, so it is difficult to know if they are domestic poultry, migratory quail, or songbirds.”
Article 28 of Law 94/1994 states that the hunting, killing, or catching of birds, wild animals and aquatic creatures, the possessing, transporting, exporting, importing or trading in them, alive or dead, whole or cut in parts or in derivatives, or destroying their natural habitats can be punished by imprisonment and a fine of no less than LE5,000 and not more than LE50,000.
However, the law may be broken for economic reasons. “Hunting migratory birds is my livelihood. I don’t know anything else,” said Shaalan, adding that he goes out hunting in the desert with his family to save on living expenses, borrowing to repay his debts after hunting and selling the birds he catches.
According to a study by Basma Sheta, a professor in the Department of Zoology at Damietta University, some families’ income depends on the hunting season, whereas the rest of the year they depend on fishing. These families consider migratory birds as a “blessing from heaven”, she said. The prices that the birds fetch are tempting for such families, encouraging hunting and making it difficult to convince them to abandon it in order to preserve biodiversity.
Al-Halawani has studied the social and economic conditions of the hunters, angering the Ministry of Environment in so doing as the study revealed the absence of supervision of poaching. Some 75 per cent of hunting practices are illegal, and the study indicated that the majority of hunters receive only small amounts of money. The price of a songbird (passerine) can be only LE1, meaning that profit only increases with large numbers. The average income of the hunters is around LE500 per day ($26).
Bahaaeddin criticises the absence of interest from research centres to study and monitor hunting rates, stressing that economics is the most important part in controlling the hunting system. The hunters depend mainly on the birds for a livelihood, so solutions taking account of economic aspects must be developed.
This was applied in the Gabal Al-Zeit area on the Red Sea, where wind turbines to generate electricity have been installed. Saber Riyad, an environmental consultant and field officer for a bird hunting project, said that some local residents had cooperated with protection associations and been trained to monitor the movement of birds. This had provided them with job opportunities that were better than hunting migratory birds, he said.
The head of the Department of Biodiversity at the ministry said that a socio-economic study of the situation of the hunters had been done in cooperation with a project funded by the European Union, the French Global Environment Facility, and the ministry, in order to understand the economic background better and to look for solutions.
LACK OF SUPERVISION: Article 45 of the Egyptian constitution specifies the state’s obligation to preserve biodiversity and protect species in danger of extinction.
Former advisor to the minister of environment for biodiversity Mustafa Fouda said that government efforts to control hunting had not been sufficient and that there had been negligence in implementing the law, however. Supervision had been difficult owing to the insufficient number of employees responsible, he added, and bureaucratic problems had meant that matters were simply left as they were, often for reasons of cost.
The Water and Environment Police may not have the resources properly to enforce the law, and resources were often directed to other things beside the protection of nature or migratory birds. Even so, there had been some positive local experiences.
Fouda disapproved of the issuance of the decree to regulate hunting and the absence of a mechanism for its implementation, stressing that there are a large number of poachers hunting migratory birds without permits. They are supposed to be punished for violating hunting laws, according to amended Law 9/2009, which increased the penalty from LE500 to LE30,000.
He added that sometimes some hunters adhere to the rules during awareness campaigns, “but things go back to where they were once the inspection campaigns are over.” Moreover, the ministry is mostly interested in fighting the hunting and trafficking of birds of prey such as eagles and falcons and has little interest in songbirds and passerines.
Fouda thinks the solution lies in forming an independent division to manage the nature reserves, and in fact a draft law to this effect was sent to parliament and the cabinet, though it was later set aside. More effective and comprehensive legislation is required, he said, suggesting the foundation of a Nature Protection Authority that would be affiliated to the Ministry of Environment.
For its part, the ministry admits difficulties in implementing the hunting legislation. “We’re suffering from weak follow-up and control over hunting operations due to few resources, including material and human resources,” it said.
“We have few vehicles capable of reaching the hunting areas, and we acknowledge that there is a problem in monitoring the implementation of legal standards for hunting, especially with the problem of the declining numbers of birds such as quail,” said Ayman Hamada, head of the Department of Biodiversity at the ministry.
Hamada said that the proposal to establish an authority with the specific responsibility to protect nature was what had long been dreamed of, and efforts had been made to establish it since the 1990s. These may be resumed again after the UN COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in November, he said. The question would be how far the new authority would be resourced, he added, allowing it to perform its role in conserving biodiversity.
HUNTING TRIPS: We also monitored hunting trips in Egypt promoted on Facebook as a hobby, different to the hunting that takes place for economic reasons.
These trips include hunting with rifles, sometimes using a type of cartridge that shoots multiple bullets at the same time and hitting larger numbers of birds. This type of cartridge is illegal, but it is still used on the North Coast from Alamein to Salloum.
We contacted one of the people responsible for hunting trips in Fayoum. Called Abu Ahmed, he confirmed that it is illegal to hunt migratory birds on Qaroun Lake in Fayoum, which was why he makes artificial “ponds” for the birds to gather around.
Article 15 of the Protection and Development of Lakes and Fisheries Law 46/2021 prohibits the exploitation or establishment of any facilities or activities on areas located near protected lakes without the state’s permission.
Concerning the trips for hunting migratory birds announced on social media, Hamada said that there was a problem with implementing the law as hunters could claim that their social media accounts had been stolen, or that the photographs were not genuine, or they could simply evade the police.
Egypt has signed many international agreements related to the protection of migratory birds, the most important of which is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) regulating the trade in wildlife and criminalising the trade in species facing the danger of extinction including falcons and eagles.
But besides hunting, there are other factors destroying the birds’ natural habitats, including climate change, something confirmed by Bahaaeddin. He said that the annual monitoring of bird migration had shown changes in the numbers of the birds. Some species had decreased and others had increased. Other species had been monitored that did not exist before in Egypt.
This is in addition to the destruction of wetlands and lakes such as the Manzala and Borollos lakes, which have shrunk in size. The North Coast has become an urban environment in some areas, affecting resident and migratory birds.
Khaled Al-Noubi, director of Nature Conservation Egypt who is currently preparing a thesis on the impact of climate change on Egypt’s migratory birds, said the birds had already been affected by a lack of water and an increase in temperatures, both of which threaten biodiversity.
A version of this article appears in print in the 3 November, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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