Qatar Natural History Group

Many thanks to John Tribuna who is stepping down as Rambles and Field Trip Coordinator after two full packed seasons of trips all over the peninsula.  John has done an exceptional job and he will be a hard act to follow.  The Rambles season is now over, but trips will resume in late October. We expect to be doing two or three trips around Qatar each month on either Fridays or Saturdays once the schedule resumes.

~ Benjamin Franklin           

Many seem to think that my independent streak comes from my being an American, but I don’t think so. It’s a trait I share with friends from all over the world. I’m pretty sure, therefore, that it comes from our shared experiences in the bush, mountains or woods, flat water or white, sands or sea. You take your pick; it doesn’t really matter, for what I learned a long time ago about being out in the wilds is simply that the river doesn’t care.

Nature and its forces are at best neutral on the topic of human survival, so we puny primates can’t afford to be. We need to stack the deck in our favor by taking precautions, in other words, we need to employ our grey matter and think ahead, to prepare for the worst case scenario and hope that it never happens. We also have to continuously work to make sure that such an event never becomes a reality; the best way to do that is to ensure that we are self-sufficient. If your habit is to go into the wilds unprepared, hoping to find and depend on the kindness of strangers, chances are that you do will do that once too often ~ and all those strangers will find are your remains.

Yes, we in our group depend on each other when we are out and about, and we also depend on each of us bringing that appropriate amount of food and water. We make sure that we provide proper care of our own equipment, too, as well as a sensible level of preparedness and precaution to prevent accidents.

This is not to say that we can prevent all accidents from happening – of course we can’t; accidents are by definition unexpected and we can’t foresee every contingency. We therefore spend a great deal of time researching our trips before we go. We also give specific instructions to our members in the trip descriptions, and always keep safety as our top priority on all of our trips - always.

We also always carry a well-stocked first aid kit.

Our first aid kit, however, may surprise you in that it does not include any medications – after much consultation with medical professionals, we determined that the common drugs carried in most first aid kits are also those to which many people commonly have serious allergies, such as aspirin or iodine disinfectants.

We have no desire to turn a minor abrasion out in the desert into a full-blown anaphylaxis emergency, so we simply won’t carry medications in our group kit.

We advise you to make sure that you always keep – in your own, personalized first aid kits – those medications that you prefer and have used before.

Be self-sufficient – plan ahead, be ready and prepared, and let’s go have a good time.

                                                                    Exciting, fun & safe travels,

                                                                   John Tribuna

                                                                   QNHG Rambles & Field Trips Coordinator  

Hello and welcome back to a new season of ambling and rambling!

I hope you have had a wonderful hot season and are ready and raring to go on some adventures to new places, as well as revisits to some old. There will be some change in the program this season, namely a reduction to an average of two trips per month, but just like the environments we so love to experience, we are also constantly dealing with transitions and change.

Another change to address is one longer in coming, that is, the make up of our group. Just over 30 years ago, the QNHG was founded by a relatively small group of mostly British and Dutch engineers, people who not only studied the environment in depth, but who spent a great deal of time living in it, camping, exploring an doing their jobs. They knew their adopted landscape and seas intimately and worked to preserve them while they interacted with them, learning from and about the local peoples and cultures.

In the last few years, however, the demographics of our group have shifted - in what I believe is a positive direction. We have become both larger and more diversified in our membership, but the backgrounds of our members now do not necessarily include the close relationship with the natural world as did our founders.  The experience of many a new member is more urban than rural, more city street than country road. What this means for us as an environmentally conscious group is that we have to revisit our origins, educate our members, and openly discuss a simple question: Who are we?

A number of spontaneous conversation have arisen regarding this topic so I have given it a great deal of thought; it has come to mind that we are more of a 'geographic society' in many ways than a simple 'natural history group'. Not only are we concerned with the natural environment, but we are also concerned about humanity's place in that environment, about how the local cultures have and still do interact with the natural world. Hence, our group visits museums such as Sheikh Faisal’s Farm and sites of historical significance, such as the Qal'at Ruwayda or Zubara City. However, while this shows others what we do, on a fundamental level this still hasn't answered the question of who we are, about the basic principles underlying our actions.

Here are some that come to mind:

First, we are stewards of our environment, outdoors leaders who lead by example. As we explore, we leave places better than we found them. That may mean picking up trash as during rambles to the inter-tidal/sabkha zones down south in Mesaieed, or up north around Al Mufjar village. We do not, however, pick up anything at archeological sites unless invited to do so; both history and nature belong to all, so they're not ours to destroy.

 Second, we treat all plants and animals with respect - whether domestic or wild. This means we don't do anything to cause undo stress or permanent damage to the flora and fauna we may encounter - or may encounter us. Although some less than expected behaviors may occur accidently, we are constantly striving to live up to this ideal.

  In addition, we pool our knowledge in the QNHG to share and deepen each other’s insights. On our trips there is often someone, usually just a fellow participant, available to answer your question, or otherwise to join you in query. This group was organized by people like us who strove to let their curiosity get the better of them, to find out what was over that ridge or what that unexpected thing was before their eyes. We may be of different backgrounds than our Dutch and British forbears, but we are their intellectual heirs. Like them, we are life-long, collaborative learners. We are constantly doing our best to dispel our own ignorance through interactions with similarly inquisitive people from all over the planet, building communication, sharing our learnings and strengthening our individual as well as collective understandings.  

John D. Tribuna

Rambles & Field Trips Coordinator

QNHG