A reserve of five regions
A royal decree in 2018 turned the at-Taysiyah reserve and its surroundings into the Imam Turki bin Abdullah Royal Reserve. It covers 91,500 km² across five regions, the Northern Borders, al-Jouf, Hail, Qassim and the Eastern Province, and SPA ranks it the Kingdom's second-largest terrestrial reserve. Much of it lies south of Rafha.
The land is a patchwork of rolling grassland, shrubland and plain that SPA likens to a savannah, cut by deep valleys and raised into mountains and basalt plateaus, with golden dunes beyond. Acacia, sidr, arta, ghada and arfaj are among its characteristic plants.
Animals coming home
In February 2022 Arabian oryx, addax and red-necked ostriches were released into at-Taysiyah under a biodiversity restoration programme. The first oryx calf followed in April 2022, eight births were recorded in May 2024, and field teams counted more than 40 Arabian sand gazelle births in the first quarter of 2026.
The reserve also sits on an autumn and spring migration path used by merlins, peregrine falcons, lapwings and houbara. And it hums: SPA counts more than 40,000 beehives at 400 apiary sites, kept by 140 beekeepers who follow the talh and sidr bloom between April and October.