![]() “But we were happy to be instrumental in this result,” he said. The government did not step in to rescue the gazelles, and it was left to a local initiative, he said. Turkey is enormously rich in flora and fauna, but is industrializing rapidly and lagging in nature conservation, said Sedat Kalem, the conservation director of the World Wildlife Fund Turkey, which gave two small grants to help start the gazelle project. In 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey declared a protected area of 50 square miles for the gazelles, and plans for a cement factory and quarries in the area were canceled. The gazelles began to thrive, increasing from about 235 in 2012 to more than 1,100 last year, according to an official count by Turkish government agencies. The project grew, securing government support for a breeding center and sanctuary for orphaned and injured gazelles. Turkey built a cement wall along the border and dismantled an old buffer fence, which opened up more territory for the gazelles and protected them from straying into Syria, where hunting remains a threat. Yet the military restrictions, and the outbreak of war across the border in Syria 10 years ago, helped the gazelles in unexpected ways. The gazelles occupy a narrow strip of territory along the border a few miles wide and less than 20 miles long that is mostly a restricted military zone. “If you make an enemy, just one, in 10 years you will have 10 enemies, and in 100 years you will have 1,000,” Ergun said.īut as the shepherds began monitoring the gazelles, the hunters got the message.Įrgun also needed the cooperation of the Turkish army, which has a base in the area. The local people were Kurds, a mountain people with their own language and culture - and a history of resistance to the Turkish state. The mountain gazelle, an endangered species, is recovering its stocks and multiplying inside the nearby protected zone. ![]() “We would say, ‘Hello, we are from the Nature Project.’ Sometimes silence is more powerful than talking.”Ī group of Anatolian sheep dogs fight with each other as two flocks of sheep return to the village of Incirli, Turkey, on Feb. “We never tried to use force to stop them,” he said. With the hunters, Ergun and his helpers adopted an approach of traditional courtesy and respect, drinking tea with them but never mentioning their hunting. With his knowledge of village life, Ergun began softly, gaining the support of local shepherds, educating children to protect the gazelles and even encouraging a local Kurdish legend of a holy man who lived with the gazelles and milked them. They dug basins in the rock to collect water for the gazelles, although it took the animals months to trust the water source. He won a grant from the World Wildlife Fund in Turkey for a grass-roots project with local villagers and bought mountain gear and amateur walkie-talkies for several shepherds, who began monitoring the gazelles. “The end of a genetic source is the same as the collapse of Earth,” he said. soldiers stationed at Incirlik Air Base used to hunt them 20 years ago, he said. The gazelles had disappeared completely from other regions, including Adana, farther west, where U.S. Hunting is allowed only under license in designated areas in Turkey, but illegal hunting is rife. There were several threats to them - lack of water and habitat especially - but by far the greatest danger was illegal hunting. ![]() The discovery presented Ergun with an altogether more important task: to help the gazelles survive. He drew on the help of Tolga Kankilic, a biologist, who gathered samples of dung, fur and skin from the remains of dead gazelles for genetic testing, and found that the DNA matched that of mountain gazelles. The mountain gazelle, an endangered species, is recovering its stocks and multiplying inside the protected zone. Yasar Ergun, right, with keepers in the protected zone in Kirikhan, Turkey, on the border with Syria, on Feb.
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