Two species of gazelle, the Arabian (or Mountain) Gazelle, and the Sand Gazelle occur naturally in the Emirates. The Arabian Gazelle is known locally as 'dhabi', and has given its name to the country's capital, Abu Dhabi (Father of, or Possession of, the Gazelle). Now scarce in the wild, due to development and hunting, numbers of both species have begun to recover since the introduction of a hunting ban in the late 1970s. There are also several thousand animals of each species in private collections, many of them on islands where the gazelles run freely in nearly-natural habitat, safe from predators. Animals from the largest of the collections, that of President HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan on the island of Sir Bani Yas, are now being reintroduced into the wild in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi. Continued captive breeding programmes ensure that both species are now safe from the threat of extinction.