King Khaled Center
The King Khalid Center for Wildlife Research is located in the Al-Thumamah area at the foot of mount Tuwaiq, 70 km north of the city of Riyadh. The center was established in 1987 on King Khalid’s farm, may God have mercy on his soul, from where it acquired its name. This farm included more than 600 heads of various wild animals in enclosures exceeding 600 hectares. Since its establishment, the center has been working on managing and developing the collection of wild animals, which constitute an important part of the Kingdom’s natural heritage. This group of animals was the first nucleus for starting a program to preserve wildlife in the Kingdom. This group included the Arabian oryx, reef antelope, manatee antelope, and Newman’s antelope. In 2004, a small group of Persian antelope was brought in to establish its breeding program. In 2005, a group of mountain ibex was brought in for breeding.
There are six breeding programs at the King Khalid Center for Wildlife Research in Al-Thumama, which are:
- - Reem antelope breeding program.
- - Edime antelope breeding pogram.
- - Newman antelope breeding program.
- - Mountain Ibex breeding program.
- - Arabian oryx Breeding program.
- - Persian antelope breeding program.
Facts about King Khalid's Center in Al-Thumama
- 1- The King Khalid Center is at the forefront of global centers specialising in research and multiplication of wild shadows for the purpose of preserving and resettling them in their natural environments in national reserves and parks.
- 2- The center is considered a bank of endangered wild shadows and contains a living group that is considered one of the most important groups in the Arabian Peninsula in terms of genetic diversity. The center multiplies the endangered local fungi in conditions families according to modern global standards, in order to support resettlement programs in wild reserves and multiplication programs, whether inside the Kingdom or in neighboring countries.
- 3- The Center maintains the genealogy of these species by keeping its information in a global database.
- 4- The center is one of the leading centers concerned with animal welfare and health and related sciences, diseases, nutrition and genetics.
- 5- Carrying out research related to preserving animals under families and in nature reserves to provide a good understanding and better performance of conservation, resettlement operations and re-launching herd management.
- 6. From its beginnings, the Center has preserved biological samples obtained from animals, and these samples have been preserved and archived. The Center currently maintains more than 75,000 samples collected from many regions around the Kingdom. These samples are a tremendous wealth, as they can be used to carry out a lot of research related to diseases, genetic studies, and others.
- 7- The center has maintained a global database for all the herds in the center since its inception, which helps in preserving genealogy books for species.
- 8- The Center has trained and built capacity for a large number of Saudi cadres who specialize in protecting innate life and managers of reserves in a wide field with regard to conservation sciences, research and application.
- 9. Raising environmental awareness and community participation through visits by schools, universities and other bodies.