A beautiful story.

Oryx, once endangered, is back

Hannah Wettig Special to The Daily Star

Unicorns ­ in myth and fairy tales ­ lived in enchanted forests, frolicking under giant trees. Although no such shining white creature ever inhabited the forests of ancient Europe, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula were once populated by white antelopes that looked an awful lot like the unicorn.

The horns of the oryx antelope are so symmetrical that only one can be seen from the profile, one of the many inspirations of the unicorn myth.

Some tales of the unicorn tell that it was hunted to extinction. So was the oryx, almost. The last wild oryx was killed in 1972 in Oman. Only a few survived in zoos. Now, after decades of captive breeding, some oryx are free again. This year 10 of them were released into their native environment in Jordan’s Wadi Rum National Reserve.

Operation Oryx started in 1961. The World Wildlife Fund and the Flora and Fauna Preservation Society of London launched a rescue operation when only about 100 were still alive in the wild.

A world oryx herd was established at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, USA, with three animals from Oman, one from the London Zoo, one from Kuwait, and four from Saudi Arabia. These nine bred well ­ by 1984 there were more than 200....The Daily Star