Amidst ongoing conflict, efforts to save this endemic tree are threatened

Editor’s note: This story is part of a collaboration between Ensia and Egab exploring environmental efforts by communities facing potentially more urgent concerns such as war and poverty. Egab is a media startup that helps young local journalists from across the Middle East and Africa get published in regional and international media outlets, with a focus on solutions journalism. You can read the other stories in the series here and here.  On a recent trek through Yemen’s Socotra island, local resident Issa al-Rumaili stops to point out a spot in the distance: “In front of us are the ruins of a vast forest of dragon blood trees,” he says. To see it requires some imagination. On an otherwise deserted hill stood three lonely trees, with their distinct umbrella-like canopies. Dragon’s blood, or Dam al-Akhawain (two brothers’ blood), as it’s locally known, is endemic to Socotra, a mostly desert archipelago south of the Arabian Peninsula, whose isolation from Yemen’s mainland has largely spared it the destruction of the country’s nine-year civil war and preserved its distinctive nature. But international and government funding for Socotra’s environmental protection authority has dried up, and financial support previously offered to native efforts to save the tree has dwindled, says the authority’s director Salem Hawash. This funding reduction isn’t completely due to the ongoing conflict, according to a 2021 report from the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a charity based in the UK. “The problems pre-date the current conflict,” the report reads. “By 2012, the IUCN reported that the Socotra EPA’s annual budget was just US$5,000.” That said, the report goes on: “It appears inevitable that the intensifying pressures that the islands are facing as they are dragged into the conflict will continue to place their unique natural and social heritage at risk.” Meanwhile, the authority’s building was converted by Saudi military forces into a temporary headquarters, according to Socotra residents — a reflection of the war’s impact on the island, and the further sidelining of its biodiversity. These hurdles, along with those brought about by a changing climate, contribute to the uncertain future for the dragon’s… Read More
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