ABSTRACT
Although some traditions of environmental management, such as the hima system of range management, go back at least to the time of the Prophet Muhammad it is only in the last thirty years or so that formal institutional structures have been developed in the Kingdom. The need to conserve, protect and regulate all aspects of the environment was recognized in the 1970s after a period of rapid industrial and urban growth. Also, at about this time, a steady stream of science graduates returning from studies in Europe and the USA brought with them key scientific skills and awareness of the long term, potentially irreversible, damage of wholesale environmental exploitation.
