Camel Grazing Ban Enforced at Imam Turki Reserve

A Saudi citizen has been apprehended in 2026 for grazing 30 camels inside prohibited sites within Imam Turki bin Abdullah Royal Reserve, where standard legal procedures for environmental violations were applied. The case highlights a wider tightening of grazing enforcement across the Kingdom's protected areas.

Under the penalty schedule currently applied to prohibited-grazing cases inside the reserve, the fine is set at 500 SAR For 30 camels in a restricted zone, the expected fine in 2026 is 15,000 SAR in total, in addition to any other legal measures that may follow.

The violation is treated as a breach of the Environmental Law and protected-area regulations. These rules allow for administrative fines reaching up to 20,000,000 SAR, and for serious or repeat offences, imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to 30,000,000 SAR, alongside licence suspension or revocation. These figures are maximum statutory ceilings and not the typical amount for a single grazing case.

Separate national guidance on overgrazing in protected or non-designated rangelands sets indicative fines of up to 200 SAR reflecting the general tightening of grazing rules in 2025 and 2026. Royal reserves such as Imam Turki bin Abdullah apply the higher 500 SAR

How violations are handled

The Special Forces for Environmental Security are the primary body handling such cases inside royal reserves. They detect violations through field patrols and monitoring, apprehend offenders, document the case, calculate the fine, and refer the file to the competent environmental and judicial authorities.

Members of the public are urged to report environmental violations, including illegal grazing, through the unified security operations number 911 in the Makkah, Riyadh, and Eastern regions, and 999 or local operations numbers in other regions, as well as the official environmental security call center and general government complaints channels.

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