Source:  Pearly Jacob                                      Date: 27 July, 2010

In the windswept steppe region of Bayan, 100 km to the south of Ulaanbaatar, incongruous metal structures stand silhouetted against the vast treeless expanse. Comprising little else than half a metal barrel mounted on a 3-meter long pole, a little door cut into the side and sealed on top with a metal sheet, these are heavy duty bird houses that could well spell the survival for Mongolia’s Saker Falcons, a prized export commodity for the million-dollar Middle East falconry market.

These structures are part of the artificial nesting project managed by International Wildlife Consultants (IWC), a UK-based agency that specializes in sustainable use of wildlife and habitats. The Director of the Project, Dr. Nick Fox, is a well known raptor biologist and falcon breeder with close ties in the Middle East and is also acting advisor for conservation projects financed by the Abu Dhabi Environmental Agency, principal sponsors of the project here in Mongolia.

"This is the first example of a planned management system for the sustainable use of a wild resource that demonstrably fits the strict requirements of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species for international trade)," says Dr Fox of the project.

Saker Hovers: A Saker Falcon prepares to enter nest with kill. (Photo: Stig Frode Olsen courtesy IWC Ltd.)

Mongolia is the only country that can legally trade in wild falcons under CITES because of its estimated healthy country population. Since 1993, more than 3,500 falcons have reportedly been exported. But these numbers only echo official figures and discrepancies in figures are widely acknowledged by biologists and CITES officials alike. According to newspaper reports, a tally in 2000 estimated that from a healthy population of 10,000 in 1994, the number plummeted to a mere 2,200 pairs while the last studies in 2003 saw a further decline of more than 50% at 6 of the monitored breeding sites. Removal of female birds, preferred in falconry for their larger size, is a contributing factor to breeding imbalance in the wild populations.

While illegal trapping, use of pesticides on gerbils and Brand’s Vole preyed on by falcons, and electrocution have been identified as threats to the bird, studies for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s 2003 report ‘Silent Steppe: The Illegal Wildlife Trade Crisis’ estimated that wildlife trade is the greatest driver in population decline in Mongolia. However, researchers of IWC Ltd. are of the opinion that the population remains stable at 2,000 to 5,000 breeding pairs as of 2008 and insist that “no data can exist to say that the (current) population is declining”.

Since signing CITES in 1996, Mongolia has already received two notices to suspend the falcon trade for non-compliance with CITES conventions and non-sustainable harvesting of birds, recommendations that were withdrawn once Mongolia agreed to maintain an export quota of 300 birds for 2009 and 2010 while implementing sustainable practices to ensure the wildlife population. Thus the artificial nesting program is the crucial hinge on which Mongolia's allowance to trade in falcons rests.

The plan for the nests follows a basic logic. “For every juvenile Saker Falcon removed from the autumn population (the trapping season), there should be at least one bird of the same sex introduced into the population from the artificial nest scheme,” says Andrew Dixon, Head of Research for IWC Ltd.  Ultimately the plan is to establish a system of sustainable harvesting based on productivity of the artificial nests

Placed in grids about 1 km apart, 250 of these artificial nest sites dot the landscape around Bayan. The nests are put in areas with high rodent densities that attract the raptors but without distinctive traditional breeding areas like cliff faces. “Providing nests attracts otherwise non breeding pairs to mate and produce chicks and does not take away pairs from the traditional breeding areas,” says Gankhuyag Purev-Ochir, a wildlife biologist working with Mongolia’s Wildlife Science and Conservation Center (WSCC), joint partners of the program.

As a juvenile Upland Buzzard peers down from the roof of one of the nests, a project spokesperson is quick to point out that the nests are benefiting other raptor species as well. Steppe Eagles, Upland Buzzards, kestrels and ravens have quickly adapted to the nesting sites. The roof of the barrels have been fitted with three lateral crowns as an afterthought to hold nesting material as buzzards usually nest on top, Saker Falcons preferring the enclosed space inside the recycled barrels.

Since initial experiments in 2005, the program has had a growing success rate with 20 breeding Saker pairs occupying the nests this year. Plans are to erect a total of 5,000 nests across 20 provinces by 2011. Implementers of the project predict that by 2015, the artificial nests can be occupied by 500 breeding pairs of Sakers and produce at least 1,500 chicks.

Wild Saker Falcons are extremely sought after by falconers in the Middle East with some birds reportedly selling for several hundred thousand dollars to end users. The species is, however, classified as endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with a decreasing population trend worldwide prompting worries of regional extinction in many areas of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Birds being illegally trapped for falconry are cited as a major cause for the population decline. In 2003, a CITES report stated that more 6,500 birds are annually exported without proper documentation while the Union for Conservation of Raptors (U.C.R) estimates the annual black market trade at a staggering USD300,000,000 making it the most lucrative wildlife black market.

Nest Full: 250 artificial nests silhouette the vast steppe across Bayan Soum. (Photo: Pearly Jacob)

With the enormous amount of money involved in falcon trade each artificial nest could serve as a potential gold mine but IWC Ltd. stresses it will have no part in direct sales. “We will not be involved in falcon export; we do not deal with sales. We can only advise the government on quota numbers. In the future we hope the government will set the sales quota using the data of our artificial nests,” says a spokesperson.

In June this year the Mongolian government announced the sale of 240 permits to legally trap and export Saker Falcons with the fee for the permit for each bird to cost USD10,000, money that the cash strapped government could well do with.

Falcon trade has been a highly controversial topic in Mongolia with senior government officials frequently suspected of corrupt deals. Alan Parrot, head of UCR and notable falconer turned conservationist, accused two local Government officials in local courts in 1999 for having officially reduced falcon prices to privately enrich themselves, a practice, he alleges, continues to this day, under the guise of legal transactions. A former advocate for sustainable use of wild falcons, Parrot changed his views after a series of unsavory experiences in Mongolia, one of which involved a personal attack that left him with 9 broken bones.

“A sustainable use program should benefit the impoverished people on the steppe and not Government officials but I realized this was absolutely impossible in Mongolia because corruption is so rampant, with only a few Government officials representing the interests of the people or of the State,” said Parrot in a recent Skype interview. Today, he is one of the most active voices campaigning for a total worldwide ban on falcon trade. He is also the central figure in the recently released 2010 documentary “Feathered Cocaine”, an exposé on the international falcon trade as the fourth most profitable illegal trade after drugs, human trafficking and arms that has received considerable critical acclaim.

“Falcon smuggling is the world's most lucrative wildlife black market, because it is not a 'person-to-person' traffic. Rather, today's black market is, almost exclusively, a 'government-to-government' black market trade,” alleges Parrot. The U.C.R website has a page of overwhelming “evidentiary exhibits” that read like a secret intelligence dossier.  Government officials, biologists and sheiks have been implicated in varying degrees in the worldwide smuggling racket.

Activists and researchers opposed to falconry are also spurred by concern for another bird, the Houbara Bustard that has been virtually hunted to extinction by falconers in the Middle East. Believed to an aphrodisiac, this is the prey of choice for falconers and the wild population has been ruthlessly hunted to a point that captive breeding and release has been the only resort to maintain the population. Many falconers have taken to organizing Houbara hunts in countries like Kazakhstan where a significant wild breeding population still exists. “The Houbara are going, they will be extinct as a wild breeding bird very soon,” is Parrot's warning unless falconry is shut down.

Talk of sustainable trade in endangered wildlife is not without controversy among biologists and conservationists worldwide and Mongolia's artificial nesting program has its share of takers and critics. Andrew Dixon of IWC takes a blunt and pragmatic view. “The trade will exist as long as the demand is there and this will not stop any time soon. You can’t afford be idealistic about it,” he said during an initial interview in April. “There is an existing market demand specifically for wild falcons in Arab lands that cannot be met by commercial captive breeding,” he adds in a report outlining conservation benefits in maintaining CITES regulated sustainable harvest of falcons.

Dimitar Ragyov, a research biologist from Bulgaria also shares the same view. He feels that hunting with falcons is so entrenched in the Arabic tradition that it’s impossible to imagine them ever giving it up. In Mongolia for research at the nesting sites, Ragyov has been campaigning for a program to reintroduce a Eurasian variety of Saker Falcon in Bulgaria where direct persecution, loss of habitat due to agriculture and possible illegal trapping for falconry have decimated the wildlife population. A survey in 2004 discovered the breeding population had crashed to an estimated 0-6 pairs, estimates that subsequently decreased to 0-3 pairs in January 2010.

Falconry has for long been an inherent part of Arabic culture but the once sustainable practice of trapping migrating falcons passing through the Gulf countries and releasing them the following winter is now a sport fueled by the many millionaires the Gulf oil rush created. The UAE also successfully lobbied last year for falconry to be registered as a World Intangible Heritage. This, along with the monetary power of the Arabs, spells a bleak prospect for those hoping for a worldwide ban on the blood sport any time soon.

Juvenile Buzzard: A Juvenile buzzard peers down from a roof nest of an artificial nest site. (Photo: Pearly Jacob)

But the pressure is mounting on the Arabs to recognize the damage being inflicted and the UAE has been pumping money into research and conservation projects as part of its commitment to reform its wildlife management and trade practices after a CITES led sanction in 2002. The Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD) is sponsoring Mongolia's artificial nesting project for 5 years till 2015. Early this year EAD also signed a joint treaty with China to conserve the Houbara Buzzard while organizing a falcon release program in the Altai Mountains of Kazakhstan in March this year.

While skeptics like Alan Parrot label such initiatives as PR gimmicks and a “Trojan horse” to gain export permits for falconry, beneficiaries like the Southeast European Saker Falcon Network and International Wildlife Consultants Ltd are happy for the money being put into conservation.

Implementers of Mongolia's artificial nesting project have expressed confidence about the success of their plan to establish strict monitoring of exported birds to comply with CITES with support from the current Minister for Nature, Environment and Tourism, L. Gansukh. But Mongolia's long history of lax control on monitoring and evaluation of its wildlife is cause for concern that a truly sustainable program is a distant reality.

In 2003, the Wildlife Conservation Society reported that though wildlife trade was the third highest natural resource earner behind mining licenses and land fees in Mongolia, investment in wildlife management were slim while the Ministry of Nature and Environment remained the least-funded ministry in the country. According to Amanda Fine, Director of WCS in Mongolia, much remains the same today. “A number of initiatives to improve wildlife law enforcement have been implemented in recent years but the establishment of a comprehensive and sustainable program to regulate wildlife trade in Mongolia remains a big challenge,” she says.

As a further damper, reports from Kazakhstan suspect that breeding populations in some regions have fallen in June from a stable 2,000 to 200 pairs. If confirmed, this will mean an 80% drop in what was considered the largest unstressed wild Saker population till date. Illegal trapping was again cited as primary reason for the decline.

It's news like this that conservationists dread and that gives just cause for demanding a worldwide ban on the wild falcon trade fueled by Arab money and addiction to falconry. But in the absence of any imminent action and the high rewards guaranteed, the artificial nesting project and sustainable trade could very well be the only way for Mongolia's Saker Falcons to survive.