Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dubai Dubai Do!

Gulf News has an interesting article about invasive species in Dubai. Scientists from the Wadi Fish Project have been finding everything from American red-eared slider turtlesre (Trachemys scripta elegans), abandoned as unwanted pets, to tilapia, stocked to provide fishing opportunities. An intriguing look at introduced species issues in a country that gets little environmental press coverage here in the USA. This older article at UAE Interact mentions additional non-native species present in the United Arab Emirates, including parakeets, mynahs and crows, and the Floridian snail Polygyra cereolus.

This marks the first post about the UAE on the ISW.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This problematic trend seems to be escalating.
Just the other day , i have seen a 3 foot rattler, from the looks of it, it resembled calfornian subspecies. How did they get here?

Well for starters shelters abound and i wouldn't be surprised if we hear of reports on rattle snake bites in the UAE.

On a diifferent note, a great deal of venomous spiders have seen a spike in numbers, from runaway per trantualas to lethal black widows and exotic mosquitos.

Also from 1999 on wards, a great deal of reptiles were spotted around abu dhabi alain and dubai's wadis. Nile Crocs, Caimans, Red sliders( usually crocs feats on tilapias and red sliders), rock iguanas, bearded dragons( could wipe out the Dhub or usomatryx population), green iguanas, rock pythons, carpet pythons, and 12nile monitors that was spotted at the eastern mangrove ring.