Al Areen Wildlife Reserve

Al Areen is the only declared terrestrial protected area in Bahrain and one of the country's five protected areas. It lies at Sakhir, in the desert interior of the main island, and covers some 7 km². It was created in 1976 as a pioneering conservation project in the Gulf, at a time when several emblematic species of the Arabian peninsula were on the brink of extinction. In recent years it has been officially renamed the Mohamed bin Zayed Nature Reserve.

The grounds are divided into two halves of about 400 hectares each. One is a park open to the public, with guided bus tours, where species from the Arabian peninsula are displayed alongside wildlife from Africa and Asia. The other is the reserve proper, access to which is restricted to specialists, researchers, vets and keepers, and which functions as a captive breeding centre; it has two surface reservoirs that sustain the vegetation and the animals.

The flagship species is the Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx), extinct in the wild in the 1970s and recovered thanks to breeding programmes such as this one. It is joined by the mountain gazelle, the reem or sand gazelle, the ostrich and a notable representation of birds, with more than eighty species recorded alongside a few dozen mammals and native plants. Al Areen thus combines the functions of zoo, botanical garden and gene bank, and is a key part of Bahrain's effort to conserve its natural heritage in the face of very rapid urbanisation.