Originally published August 15 2005
Tourism spots in United Arab Emirates will destroy wetlands
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Khor al-Beidah lagoon, home to many endangered animals and plants, is to be destroyed by developers to make way for a tourism spot.
The Khor al-Beidah lagoon is a pristine tidal flat teeming with wildlife, including endangered birds, sea turtles and manatee-like dugong that swim among its tangles of mangroves.
But a bevy of dredges and construction gangs are about to begin transforming a 1,500-acre parcel into a $3.3 billion luxury conglomeration of homes, shops, marinas and beach resorts aimed at foreign buyers and tourists.
Developers say the waterfront complex, called Umm Al-Quwain Marina, will skirt the mangroves and leave most of the 20 square miles of wetland untouched.
When you start to dredge and build marinas, that's the end of it," says Colin Richardson, a 30-year resident of Dubai and author of the periodic Emirates Bird Report and a guidebook to local species.
The leaders of Umm Al-Quwain, however, are eager to bring big projects to their emirate, which is the least-developed of the seven states in the United Arab Emirates.
It has little of the energy wealth of Abu Dhabi, the largest of the emirates, and few of the tourists of Dubai, one of the world's fastest-growing cities and tourist destinations.
The deal for the lagoon complex was signed July 23, and a few days later developers announced Umm Al-Quwain's desert interior would be the site for a new city that could eventually house as many as 500,000 people.
The tidal lagoon here is one of the last such areas in the country, especially since the partial bulldozing of a mangrove swamp on the east coast.
Emaar, established in 1997, is responsible for many of the projects that have turned Dubai into the Middle East's growth hub, including Burj Dubai, planned to be the world's tallest building when it opens in 2008.
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