(excerpts from a report by Kavitha S. Daniel, 22/02/2005, http://www.gulfnews.com/)

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Five aviaries at the National Avian Research Centre in Abu Dhabi work to breed the falcon's favourite prey in a controlled environment.

We get a quiet, cold reception at the white, barn-shaped aviary. You would not believe that it is located in the middle of the open desert near Sweihan, Abu Dhabi - the temperature is a numbing 7 degrees Celsius. And you would not believe that the freezing temperature, the special lighting and the near-deathly silence all combine to keep alive a species tottering towards the edge of extinction, thanks to it being the falcon's favourite quarry.

Here at the Abu Dhabi's National Avian Research Centre (NARC), a part of the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency (ERWDA), many experts put their heads together to increase the houbara's numbers. The research centre developed and published a conservation strategy for the Asiatic houbara in 1999 and has contributed extensively to developing the action plan of the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) Agreement on the Asian Houbara.

The urgency of it all is not misplaced. The official IUCN category for the houbara is vulnerable. In layman's language, this means their population is seriously decreasing and they are at risk of becoming endangered. Dr Olivier Combreau, director, NARC, warns that the bird will be extinct in 15 years if there are no immediate measures to stem the decline.

But that may not happen just yet, given NARC's efforts to breed the birds in captivity. Five aviaries have already been set up here. There are rows of soft-fenced cages, each housing individual houbara bustards - speckled and sandy-coloured with pale yellow eyes. The 59 cages here are fitted with tiny containers and provided with specially-manufactured food pellets and water. The bird-keeper spends a great deal of time with the birds to familiarise them with the human touch. He uses tiny worms, their supplementary food, to entice them. Intensely shy and reticent - that explains the silence - a bird moves towards him gingerly, head cocked to one side. Carey McCarty, aviculturist and NARC assistant scientist, explains ''We try to maximise our contact with the houbara to make them comfortable enough to participate in our artificial breeding programme.''

The programme's final aim is to make the wild bird tame and amiable. The male houbara's semen is collected and after careful analysis, an appropriate female bird is inseminated. Once the eggs are hatched - NARC reports a 60 per cent success rate - they are transferred to a special incubator. After 23 days, the houbara chick emerges and the taming of the houbara begins as each chick is handled and fed by humans. When the chick is a few months old, it is moved to another temporary shelter and later shifted to environmentally-controlled structures.

What is original at this centre is that we do not breed the houbara in the open but indoors, reveals Combreau. NARC has worked hard to develop and master taming techniques, diets, the husbandry and environmental parameters in the controlled, artificial environment. This includes exchange of technical know-how and research with Saudi Arabia's National Commission of Wildlife Conservation and Development in Taif and the Emirates Centre for Wildlife Propagation in Morocco and other institutions.

The centre periodically sends researchers to the houbara's natural habitat in countries such as China, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern Iran for three to four months. ''A fair amount of research has emerged from this programme'' says Combreau.

All that research and effort seems to have paid off. In fact, NARC is now thinking of doubling the breeding. ''Our experiment to breed indoors is> successful, we can hope to produce houbaras twice a year in the next five years'' adds Combreau. NARC has already been on a breeding spree - from 22 bustards in 2001 to 223 in 2004. But it is not keen on massive production. The centre's target is 1,500 houbara bustards. Houbara bustards grown in controlled conditions and in captivity are either kept for future breeding or released in the wild to establish self-sustained populations in the UAE or abroad. One of NARC's aims is to be able to hand over houbaras to falconers, reducing the pressure on the wild birds.

But captive breeding is just one of the ways to check the birds' decline. CITES - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species - is another. It is a good tool to stop illegal activities such as hunting and the falconer's mindset is slowly changing. But it will take another 20 years for things to really change, says Combreau.