| Held under the patronage of HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, the festival is organised by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) in cooperation with the Emirates Falconers’ Club and the Council of British FalconersThe festival aims to preserve falconry as an important element of UAE national heritage and is also being held in celebration of Al Ain’s recent registration on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
This year the festival’s organisers have also introduced a number of special races for salukis, camels and falcons, with qualifying heats being held in Al Ain on the 11th, 12th and 13th December, and for the first time a special Falconry Conference will run alongside the festival at the Al Ain Rotana Hotel. Dr Nick Fox, technical supervisor of the festival and a member of the Board of Directors of the Falconry Heritage Trust in the UK, said, “We thought that falconry was practiced in only 65 countries. However, we received responses from about 80 countries when we announced the organising of this Festival. 75 of them will take part in this session. “This makes the festival worthy to be the ‘Falconry Olympics’. We’re expecting about 700 falconers from overseas.” |
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