Half an hour inland from Abu Dhabi city, on what used to be a coastal salt flat, several thousand
greater flamingos spend the winter. That much is widely reported. What is rarely reported is the thing
that actually makes the place significant: they breed there.
Greater flamingos nesting in the Arabian Gulf is genuinely uncommon. In the 2021 season the
Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi recorded 1,000 flamingo nests at
Al Wathba Wetland Reserve, with nesting beginning in February rather than the usual
March — early enough that the agency said it pointed to a successful season.
First correction: the numbers everyone quotes are garbled
A single block of text circulates across travel sites and AI summaries: “home to over 4,000 flamingos
and 260 other birds, 320 invertebrates, 35 plant species, 16 reptiles and 10 mammals.”
Abu Dhabi’s own tourism authority says something different and more modest: more than 250
species of birds, and 37 plant species, alongside a wide range of aquatic life.
Note two things. It is 37 plant species, not 35. And “260 other birds” is a species count that has been
copied as though it were a headcount of individual animals. The invertebrate, reptile and mammal figures
we could not verify against any government source at all, so we are leaving them out.
Second correction: 4,000 flamingos is a seasonal peak
Both Abu Dhabi government sources frame the figure as seasonal. The tourism authority describes “an
average number of 4,000 flamingos during autumn and spring”. The Environment Agency puts it as: “when
these migratory birds fly in to spend autumn until spring here, as many as 4,000 can be counted.”
So the reserve is not home to 4,000 flamingos year-round. Saying it is does not just overstate the
number — it obscures the more interesting story, which is that some of them stay to nest.
Five other species were recorded nesting there in the same 2021 season, both migratory and resident:
Kentish plover, black-winged stilt, red-wattled lapwing, ring plover and white-tailed lapwing — mostly on
the ground, close to the roads and around the lakes. That is why the access rules are what they are.
The honour nobody mentions
Al Wathba is usually described as a Ramsar site, and it is one — the UAE has ten wetlands of
international importance covering 39,166 hectares, and Al Wathba is among them.
But the Environment Agency’s own description leads with something else. Al Wathba is “the first
protected area ever established in Abu Dhabi and the first IUCN Green list protected area in the
GCC“, entered on that list in 2018 as the first site in the region to receive the recognition.
The distinction matters. Ramsar designation recognises a wetland’s international importance. The IUCN
Green List measures whether a protected area is actually being managed effectively — an outcome
standard rather than a status. Most coverage mentions the first and omits the second.
The reserve was established by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan as the first area in Abu
Dhabi designated for protection by law. It began as a sabkha, a coastal salt flat, and has since
developed into a system of natural and man-made lakes.
Visiting, and why the gates close
There are two self-guided walking trails, of 1.5 km and 3 km, a bird-watching hide for observing the
flamingos, an air-conditioned visitor centre and shaded areas along the routes.
The important practical point is the closure, and it is routinely reported wrongly as a fixed seasonal
timetable. It is not a convenience — it is a conservation measure, and its dates move with the birds. In
2021 the Environment Agency closed the reserve on Wednesday 31 March, through to November, specifically
to protect nests as the hot months approached, and used the closure for infrastructure maintenance.
Treat it as: closed through the summer nesting season, with dates announced by the Environment Agency
each year. Check before you drive out there.
We are also not printing an area figure, opening hours or an entry fee. The size figures in circulation
conflict with each other and none appears on a government page we could open, and the same goes for hours
and pricing. That is an honest gap rather than a discovered fact.
One name, two reserves
Al Wathba Wetland Reserve and Al Wathba Fossil Dunes Reserve are different protected
areas. The fossil dunes became a designated terrestrial reserve in their own right under the October 2025
expansion. They share a name and very little else, and merging them is a common error.
The network is getting much bigger
Most articles state that Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Protected Areas Network contains 19 protected areas —
13 terrestrial and six marine. That was correct until October 2025, when the UAE President directed an
expansion.
| Change directed, October 2025 | Detail |
|---|---|
| Total protected areas | Will rise to 26 |
| Total area | 22,821 km² |
| Newly designated area | 4,581 km², to be managed by the Environment Agency |
| New terrestrial reserves | Al Wathba Fossil Dunes, Liwa Groundwater Reservoir, Ghaf Natural Reserve — plus expansion of Qasr Al Sarab |
| New marine reserves | Abu Al Abyad Marine Reserve, and Sir Bani Yas and Desert Islands Marine Reserve — plus expansion of Ras Ghanada |
The wording of the announcement is future tense — the total “will rise to 26” — so this is a direction
issued in October 2025 rather than a completed expansion, and we are reporting it as such. The Environment
Agency framed it as supporting the National Biodiversity Strategy 2031.
Elsewhere in the network sit Marawah Marine Biosphere Reserve, home to the second largest dugong
population in the world and where archaeologists found what is believed to be the world’s oldest natural
pearl in 2019, along with Al Saadiyat Marine National Park, Al Yasat and the Mangrove Marine National
Park. Bul Syayeef, west of the Musaffah channel, also holds habitat suitable for greater flamingos and
joined the World Wetland Sites Network in 2016.
Why it is worth the drive
Abu Dhabi’s conservation reputation rests on large, visible projects. Al Wathba is the opposite: a
reclaimed salt flat on the edge of the city, protected before it was fashionable to protect anything,
which now hosts a breeding colony of a bird that mostly does not breed in this part of the world.
It pairs well with the other side of the emirate’s story — our guides to
Al Ain and its UNESCO oases,
to what Masdar City actually
built, to the
Saadiyat Cultural
District and to the
Sheikh Zayed Grand
Mosque cover the built version of the same ambition, and our piece on
Abu
Dhabi’s cultural rise covers where the money went.
Primary sources: the Department of Culture and Tourism’s
Al
Wathba Wetland Reserve page; the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi’s
Sheikh
Zayed Protected Areas Network and its
2021
closure announcement, which carries the nesting figures; the UAE Government portal on
the
country’s wetlands; and the UAE President’s official site on the
October
2025 expansion of Abu Dhabi’s protected areas.
