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'Mass hunting of gazelles' sparks social media outrage

By Bahaa Al Deen Al Nawas - Jan 19,2016 - Last updated at Jan 20,2016

A photo shared on social media purportedly shows hunters posing with the bodies of gazelles they killed in north Rweished recently

AMMAN —  Social media users reacted with anger to pictures shared on social networking sites on Tuesday that showed a large number of gazelles hunted and killed in the north of Rweished, near the Syrian border.

Some Facebook users alleged that the hunters came from Qatar and were accompanied by several Jordanians.

Social media users said hunting wild animals is illegal, asking how the hunters entered a "sensitive area" that should have been off limits and who is responsible for the "massacre" they committed. 

The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) does not have the authority to supervise lands in the areas near the border, Yehya Khaled, director general of the RSCN, told The Jordan Times over the phone.

Facebook users said it is the RSCN's responsibility to preserve wildlife in Jordanian lands, and it should coordinate with other institutions to prevent entry to such areas.

They also urged the society to file a lawsuit against the violators who hunted the gazelles. 

Haigaz Kradenian, a hunter and a photographer at the German-Jordanian University, said the hunters came from Qatar and Iraq, accompanied by several Jordanians, and went to the Hadalat Dam north of Rweished and hunted 10 gazelles.

He said that when the photos of the incident were shared on social media, he recognised some of the hunters, whom he declined to identify, and said those hunters confirmed they were hunting in Jordan.

Kradenian said hunting in the area of the dam is illegal during all seasons, adding that whoever allowed the entry of the hunters should be held accountable 

Last year, the RSCN announced a decision banning Gulf citizens entering Jordan from bringing in their falcons as a step to prevent hunting of endangered species.

The RSCN, Jordan’s wildlife conservation and nature protection NGO,  said at the time that the decision was taken in agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture, and was circulated by the Ministry of Interior to local agencies and embassies of Gulf states in the country to inform their citizens.

In 1973, the government gave the RSCN a mandate to regulate hunting and protect the Kingdom’s wildlife.

 

Around 4,000 out of an estimated 7,000 hunters in the Kingdom were registered with the RSCN in 2014.

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