The houbara bustard is a small to mid-sized bustard. It measures in length and spans across the wings. It is brown above and white below, with a black stripe down the sides of its neck. In flight, the long wings show large areas of black and brown on the flight feathers. It is slightly smaller and darker than MacQueen's bustard. The sexes are similar, but the female, at tall, is rather smaller and greyer above than the male, at tall. The body mass is in males and in females.
Taxonomy
Psophia undulata was the scientific name proposed by Joseph Franz von Jacquin in 1784 who described a houbara brought from Tripoli to Vienna's Tiergarten Schönbrunn. Otis macqueenii was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1832 for a bustard from India drawn by Thomas Hardwicke. The African houbara was subordinated to the genus Chlamydotis by René Lesson in 1839. MacQueen's bustard was long regarded a subspecies of the African houbara. It was classified as a distinct species in 2003. The Canarian houbara is the subspecies Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae. The dividing line between the two Chlamydotis species is the Sinai peninsula. Based on the rates of divergence of mitochondrial DNA sequences, the two subspecies are thought to have separated from a common ancestor around 20 to 25 thousand years ago. The separation from MacQueen's bustard is older at 430,000 years. The British Ornithologists' Union's Taxonomic Records Committee's decision to accept this split has been questioned on the grounds that the differences in the male courtship displays may be functionally trivial, and would not prevent interbreeding, whereas a difference in a pre-copulation display would indicate that the two are separate species. The committee responded to this scepticism, by explaining that there are differences in both courtship and pre-copulation displays.
Distribution and habitat
The houbara bustard is found in North Africa west of the Nile, mainly in the western part of the Sahara desert region in Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Some old records exist from Sudan as well. A small population is found in the Canary Islands. The Asian houbara or MacQueen's bustard which was earlier included in this species occurs east of the Sinai Peninsula. The North African species is sedentary unlike the migratory northern populations of MacQueen's bustards. The subspecies fuertaventurae of the Canary Islands is highly restricted and endangered. A 1997 survey found a total population of about 500 birds.
Behaviour and ecology
Breeding
Like other bustards, this species has a flamboyant display raising the white feathers of the head and neck and withdrawing the head. Two to four eggs are laid on the ground. It hardly ever uses its voice.
Feeding
This species is omnivorous, taking seeds, insects and other small creatures.
Threats
Threats to Houbara bustards include hunting it for food. The North African houbara bustard populations declined in the two decades before 2004, but unlike its near relative, the MacQueen's bustard, has been increasing since. Although hunted both by falconers and by hunters with guns, the extent is much less than that faced by MacQueen's bustard in the Middle East. In 2014, a Saudi prince created an international uproar after shooting more than 2,000 houbaras while only having a permit to kill 100.
Conservation
The International Fund for Houbara Conservation is the global leader in Houbara bustard conservation. A global conservation strategy was developed and implemented over the past forty years with the objective of ensuring the species has a sustainable future in the wild through effective and appropriate conservation programmes and management plans. Since 1995, the conservation strategy adopted consists of an integrated approach combining sound ecology, protection measures in the wild, conservation breeding, and effective reinforcement programmes. The IHFC was created in 2006 to further the original programme by managing international assets and securing partnerships across the range of the houbara, which encourage sustainable practices to ensure the species’ conservation. The Houbara conservation programme is supported by the government of Abu Dhabi. A multi-faceted Houbara conservation strategy has established breeding centers in the UAE, Morocco and Kazakhstan to captive-breed Houbara and increase wild populations of the bird in its natural habitat across entire species range. In 2019, the International Fund for Houbara Conservation bred 484,351 Houbara and released more than 343,428 Houbara into the wild. The International Foundation for Conservation and Development of Wildlife is a major conservation and breeding project established with funds from Prince Sultan Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and based near Agadir, Morocco. The centre releases captive bred populations to boost wild populations.
