The desert sands and coastal ecosystems of the UAE harbour a rich unique life, said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak at a six-day conference on global species conservation in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. The UAE is home to antelope that require hardly any drinking water, reptiles with specially adapted feet for hot desert sands, coral reef that are able to withstand temperatures of 40°C, migrating birds, and the recently discovered insects in Wadi Wurayah. The late Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan outlawed hunting in 1972. He helped protect the last remaining Arabian oryx from extinction. Al Mubarak highlighted several UAE-based biodiversity programmes, including the first comprehensive survey of shark species in Gulf waters. In 2011 the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi committed to be an IUCN (Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature) Framework Partner. For a period of four years the partners have agreed to help the IUCN with its core functions of species conservation.