6. A General Launches
a War for Wildlife
It was a brisk winter's morning on the old Eilat–Beer Sheva highway in February 1959. Avinoam “Finky” Finkleman was doing his daily run, driv-ing the truck from Kibbutz Yotvata's dairy to the north of Israel. As he ap-proached the Nahal Chayon stream bed, a large animal meandered across the road. From a distance Finkleman thought it might be a monkey. As he got closer, it appeared to be a very large dog. The animal began sprinting alongside the truck at the astonishing speed of eighty kilometers per hour. After driving for about two kilometers, Finkleman braked to a stop, and the animal climbed atop a nearby hillside to look the driver over. Finkleman admired his speedy escort, identifying it as a large spotted cat. “Must be a leopard,” he thought.[1]
Every kibbutz has at least one nature fanatic, and Giora Ilani was the resident expert at Yotvata in those days. He seated Finkleman in front of a series of illustrations and had him go through the zoological equivalent of a police lineup. The identification was definitive: What Finkleman had seen was no leopard. Its head was too short, its forehead too high, its body too sinewy and “greyhoundlike,” and its tail too bushy. The animal was a cheetah. The location also supported the classification. The highway cuts across a wide-open plain that is a favorite grazing area for gazelles.[2] Leopards and most other large cats are not fast enough to catch them, but cheetahs are. That cheetah was the last wild cheetah ever seen in Israel.
During the nineteenth century, zoologists visiting Israel reported that cheetahs were more common than the leopards that prowled throughout the wooded and rocky desert regions.[3] Like many African species that mi-grated north, they thrived on the 128 species of mammals and the disinter-est of a dispersed human population that rarely ventured into the wild. But all that changed with the advent of accurate firearms and the population
The body count is long and discouraging. In 1966 a dead ostrich was washed onto the edge of the Dead Sea during a flash flood. Although in re-cent times several Israeli farms have been raising the big bird commercially, it is not the indigenous subspecies; none of those remain. When the first Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century, its skies were filled with thousands of imposing vultures and birds of prey that cleaned the land of debris. Pesticides have ravaged almost all thirty-nine of these raptor species,[6] and only a handful of the majestic lappet-faced vul-tures can be found in Israel today. They are confined to pens as scientists try to coax a few fertile eggs from them. A 1996 study summarized the damage to the breeding avian population at fourteen extinctions, with fifty-eight species presently threatened.[7] When the Huleh Valley was drained, several fish species disappeared forever. In this way an eclectic collection of reptiles, deer, bats, bear, birds, and other long-term residents of the land of Israel has quietly vanished.
Israel's twenty-six hundred plant species (including 130 that are en-demic only to Israel) and almost 700 vertebrates (including 454 bird species) reflect a unique biological juncture where Africa meets Europe and Asia.[8] By the 1960s, trends suggested that precious little would be left of such biodiversity. The mighty thrust of Zionist progress was too great for the vulnerable creatures in the land. When the Knesset established the Nature Reserves Authority (NRA) to serve as an independent agency, its members were uncharacteristically pessimistic. With the pace and pattern of Israel's development, many simply felt that “it was too late.”[9] But it was not.
The Zionist vision from the Diaspora had no clear concept of the Jewish relationship to the other creatures that called Israel a homeland. Herzl's conception of Palestine's biodiversity was completely theoretical and not particularly friendly. In his manifesto, The Jewish State, he called for the clearing of wild beasts in the new country by “driving the animals to-gether, and throwing a melinite bomb into their midst.”[10]
The early settlers were less hostile. Among them were botanists and zo-ologists who catalogued the flora and fauna of their new land with a pas-sion that was almost unparalleled. And the people of the Yishuv and in Israel quickly came to know and cherish their nonhuman neighbors.
The wildflowers that had begun to thin in the wake of Israelis' passion for springtime blossoms have made an astonishing comeback. Viper bites doubled in the 1960s after the Egyptian mongoose populations fell victim to massive government-run poisonings, but today the ecological balance has been restored: The mongoose is back, and snake bites are down. In a land where neither Muslims nor Jews eat pork, there are more wild boars running around than anyone knows what to do with. Hawks, vultures, fal-low deer, wild asses, and the elegant white oryx have all been successfully reintroduced to the wild. For thirty-five years the NRA has made a com-pelling case that human intervention with the natural world can be bene-ficial and that trend need not be destiny.
Nature preservation in Israel constitutes a success story that should be proudly told, but it is not without its caveats. Reserves often are tiny and frequently must be shared with the military. Rangers cannot control the growing hordes of motorbikes and all-terrain vehicles that invade the re-serves almost at will.[12] Supporting habitats, such as wetlands and sand dunes, dwindle into insignificance, and some indigenous animal species, such as the Arava gazelle, may no longer survive in the wild. The expand-ing network of highways strands animals in a matrix of “island” habitats, unless they take their chances crossing the road.[13] As these and other hazards grow, the budget for nature preservation remains woefully inade-quate. The resulting personnel shortages make it difficult to ensure the integrity of the reserve system. And the growth of the human population continues to turn up the pressure.
These and other challenges test the political prowess of conservation leadership and the professional acumen of agency staff as never before. They have large shoes to fill. During the 1960s and 1970s, Avraham Yoffe, a charismatic general, shaped the Authority in his own image: clever, pas-sionate, defiant, and pragmatic. For eighteen years Yoffe was the dominant personality on Israel's environmental scene and one of the most effective (and colorful) government leaders in modern environmental history. He also managed to assemble an impressive supporting cast. His legacy is in
FIFTEEN YEARS AN ORPHAN
The British Mandate was not oblivious to the issue of nature preservation during its thirty-year tenure. The British hunting laws and the Forest Ordinance, although narrow in scope, offered a modicum of protection. Yet frequently the gap between policy declarations and implementation was enormous.[14] By 1948 the depletion of wildlife stocks had reached danger-ous levels, and a variety of mammals stood on the verge of extinction. Professor Heinrich Mendelssohn is largely credited with persuading Dr. Freund, a veterinary official in the Ministry of Agriculture,[15] to ban all hunting during the first year of the State as part of the general effort to return the land to a calm equilibrium.[16]
Once the ban was lifted, it became clear that the primary problem lay with the somewhat undisciplined army, which had most of the weapons in the country. The Joint Nature Protection Committee of the Zoology and Biology Societies (which evolved into the SPNI) wrote an impassioned plea to the generals of the Israel Defense Forces calling on them to stop the unrestrained hunting of gazelles by soldiers. The appeal succeeded in pro-ducing an IDF general order in 1951 that strictly prohibited all hunting of gazelles. Pressure on the small remaining herds once again subsided.[17] But no sooner had wildlife been relieved of the scourge of military hunters than it was faced with a more perilous threat: poison.
During the Mandate, although rabies was not uncommon, it was hardly considered the paramount public health problem. In the early 1950s, how-ever, the disease had the young country in a panic. A baby boy's blood-stained clothes were found near Kiryat Shmoneh, and it was assumed that he had been attacked by a wolf. Said Warwah, a Christian Arab from Nazareth and first-rate hunter, was called in to track it down. He shot two mad dogs and discovered remains of the child in the stomach of one of them. In those days it was possible to keep such incidents out of the press, but the government decided to take action.[18]
The Veterinary Service of the Ministry of Agriculture assumed that the primary carriers of rabies were jackals. A massive campaign was launched to eradicate the animals. “I'd sit in back of the government veterinarian's pickup truck with a box of strychnine and a pile of chickens,” former ranger Alon Galili sheepishly recalls in describing his young “cowboy” days. “We'd stuff the strychnine in the chicken's mouth and just throw it into the
Despite the massive carnage, the incidence of rabies increased, reaching a peak in 1955, when 180 dogs (but only 11 jackals) were found to be rabid. In 1956 the numbers were unchanged (177 dogs and 12 jackals). Stray dogs were clearly the primary vector of the disease, but the policy was contin-ued. Eventually the poison began to produce results, and 1960 witnessed the last human fatality from rabies for thirty years.[21] Ecologically it left a terrible scourge. Predator populations, from badger and mongoose to vul-ture and eagle, were decimated. In a 1971 article, Professor Mendelssohn opined that, although hunting had wiped out only one species (the otter) since the creation of the State, poison threatened scores of others.[22] Otters are alive and kicking today, so reports of their demise were premature.[23] But, for the first time in thousands of years, the lonely howl of the jackal marking his territory did not pierce the night in the hills of Judea and the Galilee.
As hunting and fishing were under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture, it was, ironically, also deemed the appropriate body to take on issues of nature preservation. (The Ministry's conflicts of interest were not limited to the contradictory areas of poisoning and protecting wildlife. For years the Ministry oversaw crop yields and pesticide regulation as well as water quality and supply.) The lack of a clear institutional will for protect-ing habitat and wildlife was manifested in the limited funding and man-power made available for these purposes.
The Department of Beekeeping was the best bureaucratic solution the Ministry of Agriculture could come up with. The spiritual significance of milk and honey notwithstanding, the Department did not provide full-time work for its head, David Ardi. So it was that during the early 1950s, issues involving hunting and wildlife protection in Israel came under the purview of beekeepers.[24] Two years later, in 1956, a national hunting in-spector was appointed to join the department; Uri Tzon was the first to oc-cupy this post. It was hardly an effective bureaucracy, however: Tzon had to share a jeep with a gardening specialist.
When Peretz Naftali became Minister of Agriculture, things began to change. Naftali was a German immigrant who enjoyed the company of
Mendelssohn's law took a novel approach that has since been adopted in other countries around the world. Rather than making lists of animals that are off-limits to hunters, the law bans hunting in general but allows for licenses to permit the hunting of specific species that can sustain losses.[28] All nondomesticated animals are protected from hunters, from February until September. During hunting season, the Minister stipulates the limitations on the type and number of game. The law bans certain forms of hunting entirely, including the use of poisons, drugs, traps, nets, glue, or explosives. Pursuit in a motor vehicle is also forbidden. The max-imum penalty for violation is one year's imprisonment and a fine. Faced with new statutory responsibilities, the Minister of Agriculture estab-lished an independent hunting department.[29]
The new regulations enabled concerned citizens to get involved. In 1957 Dr. Reuven Ortal was a typical fifteen-year-old, growing up outdoors at Kibbutz Maoz Haim. One day he and a friend were wandering past Kochav ha-Yarden, the Crusader castle overlooking the Jordan Valley. Suddenly they spotted a hunter, shooting at birds indiscriminately. Feigning interest in the prey, Ortal engaged the hunter in a discussion and eventually got him to show him his hunting license. Once he saw the name, Ortal revealed his real motive and charged that the conditions of the license were being vi-olated. The hunter put a bullet in the chamber and told him that he and his friend had one minute to clear out of his view. Ortal made a beeline for safety but immediately reported the incident to the agricultural ministry. The evidence he presented in the judge's chambers (as was required for mi-nors) led to the hunter's criminal conviction, cancellation of his hunting li-cense, confiscation of his gun, and a sentence of a five-hundred-lira fine or forty days' imprisonment.[30] Perhaps Ortal was not entirely typical. Seven years later he was hired as an inspector by the brand-new Nature Reserves Authority and today is its most experienced employee.
In those days, SPNI Director Amotz Zahavi enjoyed excellent relations with the Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Agriculture, Asael Ben-David. Zahavi saw the Ministry, with its existing authorities in water and land resources, forestry, grazing, and hunting, as the appropriate place to base governmental conservation activities.[31] In practice, Ben-David was
Under Paz's management, the Department would slowly increase its budget and grow to include a handful of inspectors. (It finally received funding in 1962 to pay for a departmental vehicle.[32]) The small team set to work, doing what it could to curb the anarchy that characterized hunting in Israel. For example, Paz banned hunting altogether in two areas—Ramat Isachar and the pools near the coast at Ma'agan Michael, protecting gazelles and birds, respectively. This set the groundwork for what would later become nature reserves.[33]
The general idea of reservatim was in the air, and a number of proposals were advanced.[34] The vision of Zahavi and the SPNI was by far the most ambitious. As part of a scientific symposium in 1953, Zahavi helped Mendelssohn compile a map of those areas in Israel that should be declared nature reserves.[35] A government agency would be required to oversee them, of course. In 1958 the SPNI passed the pro-posal on to the Ministry of Agriculture.[36] Early optimism, however, proved deceptive.
Although there was considerable support among governmental min-istries for a nature reserve statute, the government was unstable and col-lapsed twice, forcing new Knesset elections. Each time, the legislative process went back to square one.[37] An even more serious threat to the pro-posal came in the form of a small branch in the Prime Minster's Office called the Department for Improving the Country's Landscape (or “Landscape Improvement Department” for short).
As director of the Prime Minister's office,Teddy Kollek (later Jerusalem's renowned mayor) was responsible for promoting tourism. In 1956 he set up a committee to give the subject a boost. It was a high-powered forum. Joining Kollek as cochair was former military chief of staff Yigael Yadin and other leading archaeologists. Their orientation was completely different from that of the SPNI. They envisioned a network of parks and tourist at-tractions and established a permanent department to further their cause.[38] Although Yadin formally chaired the Landscape Improvement Department, it was run out of the Prime Minister's office by Yan Yanai, a former general
The nature protection camp's suspicion of Yan Yanai's Landscape Improvement Department was grounded not so much in territorial politics as in ideology. They wanted reserves, not tourist attractions. The lines were drawn for one of the most interesting parliamentary struggles in Israel's environmental history.
TOWARD A NATURE RESERVE AUTHORITY
In 1962 Moshe Dayan was appointed Minister of Agriculture. On the whole, his attitude toward the intrigues and nuances surrounding nature preservation policy can best be characterized as indifference. “When we first approached Dayan, he didn't know what we wanted from him,” recalls Uzi Paz. “But he was practical enough to appoint a committee. He assigned the job to the head of the Israel Lands Authority, Yosef Weitz. Weitz, in turn, appointed Nachman Alexandron to head the forum.”[40]
The Alexandron Committee began to sift through seventy different proposals, trying to reach a consensus among its very diverse members. But Yan Yanai and his Landscape Improvement Department would not wait for them to reach conclusions. Frustrated by six years of improvisa-tional initiatives without real statutory authority, Yanai may have sensed the growing influence of Paz and the preservationists on the Alexandron Committee. Preempting the Alexandron process, Yanai lobbied for passage of a National Parks Law that had been collecting dust since its preparation in 1956 at the Ministry of the Interior.[41] With the continued hesitation of the Minister of the Interior, Moshe Haim Shapiro, Yanai took his case straight to his boss, the Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion decided to submit the proposed law on behalf of the entire government.
The bill created a single National Parks and Nature Reserves Authority. It established two ruling bodies—a broad Council to recommend to the Minister of the Interior which lands should become parks and a more nar-row overseeing Authority. Both were composed primarily of government representatives. The brief, three-paragraph explanation of the law clarified its orientation. It was not nature preservation.[42]
It was at this time that JNF strongman Yosef Weitz became concerned that his laissez-faire approach to the new bureaucracy might have been
Three times during December 1962 the Knesset would deliberate the bill. The speeches constitute the most profound discussion about the human relationship with the land of Israel in the country's legislative his-tory. Their topics, ranging from Jerusalem building codes to the National Water Carrier's impact on aquatic habitats, offer a rare snapshot of the ex-tent and form of ecological awareness during that period.
THE KNESSET'S GREENEST DAY
From his opening statement on December 3, 1962, on the Knesset ros-trum it is clear that Ben-Gurion's vision of the new Authority was closer to that of the nature preservationists than to those who supported the establishment of national parks. The Prime Minister took the un-usual step of quoting a previous speech, by Knesset member Yizhar Smilansky, who was also a well-known literary figure, published under the pseudonym S. Yizhar. He had already emerged as the greatest par-liamentary proponent of nature preservation and was openly troubled with the proposed law's orientation. Ben-Gurion apparently sympa-thized and turned Smilansky's speech into Israel's quintessential plea for nature preservation:
It is impossible for man to remain without vistas that have not been mended by his own hand. It is impossible to exist in a place where everything is organized and planned unto the last detail, until all remnants of the original image, the natural and organic signs of the earth's creation, are erased. It is a necessity for man to have a place to go to shake himself off and refresh himself from the city, from the built, from the enclosed, from the delivered and to absorb the refreshing contact with the primal, with the open, with the “before the coming of mankind”—if there ever was such a time. A land without wildflowers through which winds can blow is a place of suffocation. A land where winds cannot blow without obstruction will be a hotel, not a homeland. …[45]
Eleven Knesset members (MKs), including most of the women in that body, waxed eloquent about the importance of conservation. Leftist Mapai party representative Rachel Zabari led the calls for much broader
The underlying philosophical and political power struggle between the champions of nature preservation and those of Yan Yanai's developed National Parks occasionally crept through the otherwise apolitical re-marks. Yizhar Smilansky, the nature lobby's closest parliamentary ally, directly challenged the anthropocentric orientation of the law. Yanai had also lined up his supporters. MK Gidon Ben-Yisrael extolled the Landscape Improvement Department's past experience and contributions, countering that it should be granted a central role. All speakers felt the law was late in coming and lamented favorite pristine corners of their beloved land, laid waste by the fourteen years of rapid development that followed independence.
Ben-Gurion's[47] closing comments, apparently off the cuff, offer one of the most forthright expositions of the founding father's ideas about pre-serving the country's national and natural heritage:
I think that all the speakers, and I place myself amongst them, are imbued with the beauty of nature, of trees, of the sea, of the magnificent mountains, [and] see in them grandeur and loveliness. But I also see this in man's creation. Not just the creation of nature and not just the literary and artistic creations of man, but also economic and technological creations. …[48]
Ben-Gurion concluded the debate on an upbeat note: “The debate itself may not have changed our country's landscape, but it may have slightly altered the Knesset's landscape.”[49] The bill passed, with a consensus that a joint committee (Interior and Education) would have to make massive re-visions before its final second and third readings.[50] The serious politicking could begin.
SMILANSKY'S SOLOMONIC COMPROMISE
With the proposed law passed, the Alexandron Committee appointed by Dayan to consider the issue was in danger of becoming irrelevant. After its slow start, it was forced to reach conclusions swiftly. Discussions focused on the scope and boundaries of the possible nature reserve system. The
Zahavi and Paz were fearful that under the proposed bureaucratic framework, nature preservation would be co-opted by Yadin and Yanai's vision of grassy archaeological parks and swimming areas with fences and admission fees. The two Knesset committees served as arbiters between the competing bureaucratic perspectives of Yan Yanai from the Prime Minister's office and Uzi Paz from the Ministry of Agriculture. Yanai en-joyed the advantage of being able to highlight the popular new park sys-tem in demonstrating the advantages of his approach.[52] When feelings ran high in committee, Paz became concerned that the Knesset would send the bill back to the overseeing ministers to work things out.
As a tactical response, the nature lobby called for a formal distinction between “parks” and “reserves.” Under the two-tier system that MK Smilansky and other parliamentary allies pushed through the joint com-mittee, the Nature Reserves Authority and the National Parks Authority would be run entirely independently. Nature reserves were to be left alone, whereas national parks were to be developed. God's commission to Adam about the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15) is sometimes invoked to clarify the difference between the two entities: “to work” (parks) and “to protect” (reserves). The distinction creates confusion, because the term “National Parks” in countries like the United States has come to mean something much closer to Israel's “Nature Reserves.”
The other issue that troubled Paz and Zahavi was the absence of any provision that extended nature protection beyond the limited boundaries of the reserves themselves. From an ecological perspective, Israel is a tiny country, and most of the nature reserves envisioned by the Alexandron Committee were miniature in their dimensions. Plants and animals needed broader protection. Yet the concept of “protected natural assets” did not appear in the proposed law and was mentioned only in passing during the Knesset debate, by Rachel Zabari.[53]
Despite the wall-to-wall support for the concept, discussions over details in the joint committee bogged down. In the summer of 1963, Israel's Knesset decided to disband once again for early elections. The adjournment threatened to erase the considerable parliamentary progress that had been made. At the last minute, the law was rushed through committee, and an entire section about natural protected assets
In the general haste surrounding the vote, the text came out ragged. The legislative experts at the Ministry of Justice forgot to include a prohi-bition on sales of “protected natural assets” that was to have been part of the package.[54] But the revised law, with its provision of parallel bureaucra-cies for parks and reserves, passed. (The system survived until 1998, when the two authorities were finally merged.) For nature preservation in Israel, the Knesset vote was a triumph.
AVRAHAM YOFFE ENTERS THE STAGE
Although it fell under the general purview of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Nature Reserves Authority was an independent government corpora-tion, ruled by an eleven-person board and advised by a scientific committee. The law stipulated that Authority members represent a broad range of ministerial, scientific, and public interests. The group's first meeting, in January 1964, included most of the key players in the political maneuvering and manipulations that surrounded the legislation: Yadin, Men-delssohn, Smilansky, Weitz, Alexandron, and Paz. To preside over this unruly cast, Moshe Dayan appointed a new face: an active IDF general, Avraham Yoffe.
It was also natural for Dayan to appoint the head of his nature preser-vation department, Paz, to serve as Director of the new NRA (or, as it quickly became known within nature circles,” the Authority”). Yet once the flush of victory wore off, Paz was left with his existing staff of hunt-ing inspectors. During its first year there were never more than sixteen workers in the entire agency, although conditions were somewhat better than before the establishment of the Authority. For instance, at his previ-ous job Paz had no access to a private car, but as director of the Authority he was important enough to receive a vehicle. However, he still lacked suf-ficient status to merit a telephone in his home for emergencies.[55]
In January 1964 the Authority set up shop in an old German house under the literal shadow of the central office of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Kiriyah, a government/army complex in downtown Tel Aviv. Fearful that their rivals would try to send the law back to the Knesset and cancel the two-tier system, Paz and his staff worked around the clock to create user-friendly reserves that might be showcased in defense of the independent Reserves Authority.[56] (Ironically, the flurry of trails, parking lots, and signs placed in a few small reserves such as the Tel Dan streams and the Tanur waterfalls actually blurred the distinction between parks
Amotz Zahavi and the SPNI leadership still had a paternalistic attitude (bordering on condescension) toward the new Authority. After all, their lobbying had created the institution, and it was being run by one of their own. Still, the leaders of the SPNI recognized their own limitations. If na-ture enthusiasts today have a quixotic image, during the early 1960s they were considered positively eccentric. Amotz Zahavi came up with the novel idea of enticing General Yoffe (see Figure 13) to take over the job of NRA Director when he retired from his post as Head of the Northern Command. It may have been Zahavi's greatest single inspiration.
Yoffe's biography was indistinguishable from those of other elite “British army alumni” from the Yishuv, the leaders whom David Ben-Gurion ultimately favored to command Israel's military.[57] Although many of these men, such as Yigael Yadin, Ezer Weitzman, and Haim Bar Lev, were ten years his junior, they were Yoffe's peers because of their veteran status; they were his friends and, in many cases, relatives. Yoffe was born in the agricultural village of Yavnael in 1913 to parents who came to Israel during the Second Aliyah, in 1906.[58] He studied at the Yishuv's leading agricultural boarding school, Mikva Yisrael, and distinguished himself as the most mischievous of the many students who would later on assume the leadership of the new State.[59] He was active in a youth movement and helped found Kibbutz Tel Amal (later called Nir David). Yoffe trained under Orde Wingate's[60] night battalions, and when World War II broke out, he formally joined the British Army, in which he served with distinc-tion for six years. The experience left him with a lifelong appreciation for English culture; in his final days he joked about bringing the British back so the country might be run properly.[61]
In 1946 Yoffe returned to his kibbutz but was soon called back to full-time service by the Haganah, the Yishuv's military organization. (At his wife's behest, Yoffe finally moved to Haifa in 1950, yet he always missed the pastoral communal life of the kibbutz.[62]) After serving as a battalion commander in the Golani Infantry Brigade during the War of Independence, he stayed on as a career officer for fifteen more years, until the age of 51. During the 1956 Sinai Campaign, he headed the 9th division, which raced down the Sinai desert to conquer Sharm el-Sheikh at the peninsula's southern tip. Overnight he became a national hero.[63] In 1963, although still on active duty, he received special permission to serve as chairman of the newly formed Nature Reserves Authority Council.
He was not an obvious choice from the point of view of the environ-mental community. Yoffe was known to be a hunting enthusiast who took advantage of his military privileges to pursue his nefarious hobby.[64]
Ever the good soldier, Uzi Paz was supportive of the idea of assigning Yoffe to head the NRA and volunteered to step down. Abdicating the top position at a new government agency for the good of the Authority con-stitutes one of the most selfless acts in the history of Israeli public service, much less environmental administration. Paz's wife Batyah was not en-thusiastic about the decision and to this day feels that it was never ade-quately appreciated.[65] But Uzi Paz had no regrets.
Yoffe was hesitant. There were other ideas he had envisioned for a civil-ian career, including running development projects in Caesarea. Dayan in-sisted that he run the Authority full-time.[66] Ultimately the lobbying from the conservation community proved irresistible. Yoffe retired from active military service in November 1964, and in May 1965, Haim Givati, the new Minister of Agriculture, appointed him director; Yoffe immediately appointed Paz as his Deputy.[67]
While nationally Avraham Yoffe still enjoys recognition as a military hero, in the environmental community his stature has become mythical. It is virtually impossible to find anyone who worked with him to say any-thing bad about him. Everyone has a favorite story that highlights his larger-than-life proportions. Yoffe's son Danny claims that people's mem-ories exaggerate his father's actual dimensions. “He really was not that tall. Just wide. He loved food, truly a carnivore. And he ultimately died of diabetes.”[68]
His appetite remains the topic of tall tales to this day. Reuven Ortal, a young inspector at the time, remembers a goodwill feast in Yoffe's honor hosted by the mukhtar of the Druze village of Beit Ja'an. So many local guests wanted to meet the army hero that they had to host the banquet in two waves. Yoffe had no trouble eating twice. Wasting no room on vegeta-bles, he devoured all the exotic meat delicacies, especially the tongue and skull.[69] Even in more refined settings, his appetite sometimes got the bet-ter of him. Yoffe had a habit of walking into the kitchen of his host, open-ing the refrigerator, and pulling a leg off of a chicken or helping himself to some other tasty morsel without being invited.[70]
Not only for food did the general have an appetite. His relationship with his second wife Aviva, the elder sister of Leah Rabin, was not always a happy one. (Yoffe's first wife died in a motorcycle accident with Yoffe's brother driving. The family complications did not end there, however. He soon married Aviva, literally the girl next door, who previously
Taking the job as the head of the Authority changed him as much as it did the Authority. While Yoffe had always felt close to nature, his son Danny insists that with the appointment he was born again. Yoffe gave away all his hunting rifles and never shot at another animal, even during the “hunting” season, when it would have been permissible.
A SAFE PLACE FOR NATURE
When the NRA was created, Amotz Zahavi perceived it as an implement-ing body, with the SPNI providing direction and overall ideology. Because they were already filling government enforcement and inspection func-tions, it seemed natural for SPNI workers to continue working in this ca-pacity. So Zahavi proposed a hybrid unit to be called “Shachal,” an acronym for Society/Authority Cooperation.
The experiment lasted a year. Once he took over, Yoffe's approach quickly became, “The Society is all well and good, but I'm in charge here.”[72] Many workers, with a foot in both worlds, found the experience particularly wrenching.[73] From the Society's perspective it was always clear that Shachal was a transitional stage. Although the new and under-staffed agency needed the reinforcements, Zahavi told his SPNI recruits, “The second they feel strong, they'll throw us out.” It was hard for Zahavi to imagine that it would happen so quickly. The split presented the SPNI with an identity crisis. Until then they had had a clear hands-on activist mission to go into the field and protect nature. Suddenly the organization had created a competitor that had more resources and au-thority and could therefore do the job more effectively. The story of the child who outgrows the father may be common but still involves painful transition.
In retrospect, though, environmentalists have few regrets that Yoffe ran the Authority “his way.” The Authority's immediate task was to get as much land under its protection as possible. Without Yoffe's unique
The law requires a tedious process of consultation prior to an area's ac-tual declaration as a protected reserve: The Minister of the Interior can make a declaration only after consulting with the Minister of Agriculture (today the Minister of the Environment). He must receive feedback from all affected local authorities and, in the event that the reserve might affect a holy or ancient site, the Ministers of Religion and Education. The site has to be approved in all relevant zoning schemes, requiring the cooperation of the slow-moving local planning committees. The law also holds that if a reserve is proposed on a site that has significance for national security or that might potentially be used for military training, the Minister of the Interior must comply with any directives from the Minister of Defense.[74]
The bureaucratic hurdles were deliberately designed to ensure a balance of interests, and they successfully clipped the Authority's wings. Despite the enthusiasm and momentum after the unanimous Knesset vote, during the Authority's first year, only three sites were declared nature reserves.[75] Yoffe, after taking over, not only increased the number of sites but their size as well. For example, in the largest undisturbed area of the north, Mt. Meron, the Alexandron Committee recommended three separate reserves that collectively did not exceed twenty-four thousand dunams.[76] On December 9, 1965, Yoffe pushed through Ariyeh Sharon's integrated ninety-six-thousand-dunam reserve and then began work on expanding it.[77] To this day, the Meron Reserve is the jewel in the NRA crown. By the end of his tenure, close to one hundred reserves had been declared.[78]
Strategically Yoffe was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, he could create as broad a network as possible, meaning that most nature reserves would be small, capturing pockets of particular natural and scenic value. Alternatively he could concentrate on the larger re-serves.[79] A decade before the so-called “SLOSS” debate raged among American conservation biologists over the ecological advantages of a “single large” reserve (SL) versus “several small” reserves (SS), Yoffe faced one of the seminal questions of nature preservation. Typically, he decided to reject what he perceived as a “false dilemma” and pursue both routes simultaneously. In doing so, he knowingly subjected his staff and its successors to the painstaking bargaining and minutiae that accompanied the declaration of each reserve. It also meant spreading thin his modest staff of rangers. At the same time, however, he would preserve a much richer variety of resources. The results can be seen in some basic statistics: Of existing and planned reserves in Israel, 63 per-cent are less than one square kilometer in size and 25 percent are between
While Yoffe took the lead at the national level, the local political wheel-ing and dealing behind the declarations were not trivial. Most of the lands were located in rural areas, so it was important to gain the support of the surrounding communities. Dan Perry, an SPNI recruit, had been a general secretary and business manager of a kibbutz. Yoffe assumed that he could relate to farmers and sent him out to make peace with these communities. Perry describes the climate of the 1960s and early 1970s:
In general the country was very naïve in those days, and the agricultural settlements saw nature preservation as something positive. Every kibbutz had some members who were known as enthusiasts, and they were natural allies. The country was less greedy during this period; there was a willingness to sacrifice for the public good.[81]
Not all communities were completely altruistic, however, and deals had to be cut. For instance, Kibbutz Dan gave up land, in return for which it re-ceived a promise to allow development near the Tel Dan reserves. Other kibbutzim got grazing rights.[82] The SPNI was critical of some of the con-cessions, but without the agreement of the local planning commissions, controlled by representatives of the same kibbutzim, declarations could be stalled indefinitely.
While he could bank on the goodwill and public support that the SPNI had built up over the years, it was Yoffe's personal connections that were of paramount importance. This was particularly so in the NRA's many dealings with the military. Nervous underlings would often caution Yoffe that he was being too ambitious and that his grandiose proposals would backfire. Anticipating the competing bureaucracies' tendency to nibble away at his initial request, however, his typical reply was, “If you've got mice in the pantry, you have to start with a very big cake.”[83] Usually his maximalist strategy proved right.[84] In one crucial area, however, he may have miscalculated.
Yoffe haggled over the creation of reserves only in the northern half of Israel. Regarding the southern Negev region, he backed a broader vision, proposed by Azariah Alon, that turned the usual presumption on its head: The entire Negev would be declared a reserve, and any settlement there would require the permission of the Authority.[85] Here Yoffe encountered opposition. Haim Kuberski, the powerful Director General at the Ministry of the Interior, generally sympathetic to environmental interests, felt that it was too much. Nothing came of the plan. In a sense,Yoffe went for broke
FLOWER POWER
With a system of postage-stamp-sized reserves, it became crucial to ex-pand protection beyond the boundaries of the reserves themselves. The “protected natural assets” statutory provisions offered the NRA just such an extraterritorial vehicle. Ultimately, hundreds of ferns, fish, trees, shrubs, and well-known mammals were listed for protection regardless of their location.[88] The list of proscriptions even includes the damaging or taking of four different types of geological formations. The rules were first tested on Israel's wildflowers; the wildflower protection campaign of the 1960s showed the potency of government and public-interest groups working in concert.[89]
Springtime in Israel carries resplendent blossoms, and meadows are transformed into multicolored quilts. Since the advent of Zionist settle-ment, wildflowers have inspired a spontaneous race to the countryside. Israelis delighted in bringing home the colorful anemone, the edible lupine, and the rare iris by the sackload. Picking wildflowers was in fact part of nature education. As Israel's population grew, however, the child-hood pastime became destructive. Entrepreneurs sold commercial quanti-ties of posies by the roadside. With no time to germinate, the blossoms began to disappear.
Moshe Dayan had finally gotten the nature nuts out of his hair and was unwilling to entangle himself in any more legislative squabbling on envi-ronmental issues. And so Uzi Paz quietly prepared a draft, and in 1964 laureate Yizhar Smilansky shepherded it through the Knesset as an amend-ment to the National Parks and Nature Reserves Law. The amendment prohibited sales of protected natural assets without a license (granted by the Director of the NRA[90]). The campaign was ready to begin. Immediately thereafter a list of protected wildflowers was submitted to the newly formed National Parks and Nature Reserves Council for approval.
Passing the law was easy; the primary challenge was educational. The first step was to simplify the list of protected flowers. For instance, by in-cluding all types of irises, many varieties that were in no way endangered rode on the coattails of the threatened species. In the same way, blanket
Aesthetics was also considered. Only flowers that were attractive made the list. Initially there were two flower designations: protected and de-fended. The public was allowed to pick ten flowers each from the former list, which included cyclamens, narcissus, buttercups, gladiolus, and the conspicuous red anemones.[91] But with time this only confused the public and the inspectors in the field, and so picking flowers from this group was banned as well. In all, seventy wildflowers were “defended.”[92]
Consultation with public-relations experts did not produce any novel ideas. The initial slogan for the campaign, “Don't Pick, Don't Uproot, Don't Sell, and Don't Buy,” came off heavy-handed. Eventually it was changed to “Go Out to the Landscape, but Don't Pick,” a rhyming jingle in Hebrew, which survives to this day. So does the campaign poster of wildflowers on a black backdrop, based on paintings by Heather Wood, a British artist who had impressed Yoffe during his travels.[93]
Yoffe raised the equivalent of forty thousand dollars for the campaign. Every national newspaper published the new regulations and sported a wildflower-of-the-week column in their expanded Friday editions. National lottery tickets featured wildflowers on them. The NRA sent the wildflower poster to tens of thousands of public institutions. But the mar-keting strategy targeted children, especially in the compulsory kinder-gartens (children around five years old). They would bring the message of self-restraint home to their parents. Elementary and preschool teachers were the frontline troops, and their effectiveness exceeded everyone's ex-pectations. And to beef up enforcement presence, the Authority appointed hundreds of “volunteer inspectors.”[94]
Except for a few cynics, who saw the whole campaign as a front for the T'nuva agricultural cooperative of commercial flower-growing interests, it was an extremely popular campaign.[95] Many factors can be put forward to explain its phenomenal success, relative to other public appeals: the ideal-istic spirit of Israel during the 1960s; the population's homogeneity; the availability of an alternative, inexpensive flower supply; and the lack of in-convenience (as opposed to efforts to increase public-transport ridership or antilitter campaigns). None of the explanations is particularly satisfying. The simplest may be the best: Israelis love their wildflowers and came to understand that without collective self-discipline they would disappear. The NRA and the SPNI had a simple message, and they stuck to it, together.
Flowers tend to be more popular with the public than are other types of plants. The energy and creativity surrounding their protection also served as an exception that proved a rule. Ironically it was the zoologist, Mendelssohn, who in the early 1970s admonished both the NRA and the SPNI for neglecting the preservation of relatively arcane flora species in favor of less endangered but more attractive wildlife.[96]
RANGERS AND NATURALISTS
Not only the wildflowers but also the staff of the NRA grew under Yoffe's leadership. In his first three years at the helm, the number of inspectors in the field increased from fifteen to thirty-three. After ten years the number reached 156.[97] Although it may have been an institutional flop, the Shachal unit introduced to the Authority a generation of young SPNI personnel who chose to stay with Yoffe in government service. This group included such figures as Adir Shapira, Dan Perry, and Alon Galili. They brought with them not only a passion for the subject matter, but knowl-edge and field experience.
Their presence also created a clear dichotomy among the NRA workers. Despite their lack of formal training, the SPNI alumni were perceived as the experts. Primarily from kibbutzim, they wore their sandals year-round and shared a youth movement educational orientation. On the other side were the more macho military types that Yoffe had brought with him from the army. Many of these “rangers” were attracted to nature because of hunting. For instance, Uri Horowitz, one of the early NRA inspectors, had been convicted of hunting violations.[98] Yoffe also brought on board Arab and Druze inspectors who were known to be skilled hunters. The rangers departed from conventional international stereotypes. Hunting enthusiasts are typically found in forestry rather than nature preservation agencies.
Although the new agency probably benefited from the different skill sets and capabilities each group brought with it, there was tension between the two camps. It was not only their attitudes toward nature that differed, but their deportment. The coarseness of the military types, who freely burped and cursed, made the more refined and younger SPNI inspectors somewhat uncomfortable.[99] Yoav Sagi was one of the few Shachal rangers who chose not to leave the SPNI, maintaining a formal “dual affiliation” as chief ranger and field-school director in the Meron region until the end of the 1960s. He believes the essential difference in the organizations was the approach to decision making. Raised in a kibbutzlike organizational culture, SPNI rangers worked around the clock but expected their views to be influential in decision making. Yoffe, on the other hand, was used
It did not take long for a synthesis of the two styles to emerge. The macho “sheriff” function was manifested in the tough oversight of the two thousand hunting licenses the NRA granted during the 1970s (and of the many others who hunted anyway).[100] It also was reflected in the alacrity with which rangers themselves picked up rifles. In 1966 the NRA forged a formal agreement with the Veterinary Service. Rangers agreed to shoot any stray dogs they encountered, and the veterinarians agreed to suspend all poisoning activities.[101] During the 1960s and 1970s, seven thousand to ten thousand dogs were shot each year. Even today the problem remains acute in the West Bank, where several hundred dogs are shot each month.[102] In addition, stray cats in natural settings were gunned down in order to pre-serve the genetic purity of the indigenous wildcats. Recently, at the request of animal rights groups, the NRA instructed its field personnel to try to call stray dogs before shooting them, but the 1966 agreement remains in force.[103] Sometimes a rabies outbreak, such as a 1997 scare in the Arava, requires broader intervention; in this case NRA rangers shot dozens of potentially rabid foxes inside the perimeters of area kibbutzim.[104]
None of the rangers had advanced zoological or botanical training. Yoffe was aware of this and, in 1966, brought D'vora Ben Shaul (see Figure 14) onto the NRA staff. Ben Shaul did not fit into any particular mold. Raised on a farm in east Texas, she believes that her passion for animals was forced on her by a pet dog who would chase down a variety of rabbits, par-tridges, and squirrels and then tote them home to her. Having acquried doctoral degrees in biology and theology, she spent much of her time in the 1960s working as an unpaid curator at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. When she came to complain to Yoffe about the pervasiveness of poison-ings and their impact, he ended up hiring her as a wildlife supervisor.[105]
She was not welcomed into the Authority's pervasive macho culture. (Years later, the inspectors told her that they actually staged a protest when they heard they might have a female boss. Yoffe threw them out, telling them he had “enough balls” already and wanted some brains.) It was not just her hands-on experience with animals that eventually gained the confidence of her coworkers: Ben Shaul was from Texas and could drink many of the inspectors under the table.
In 1970 the NRA founded a Poison Department to deal more systemat-ically with the issue of pesticide abuse. Ben Shaul was pressed into service to begin the long task of reining in the agrochemical industry and its allies at the Ministry of Agriculture's Plant Protection Department.[106]
The next scientist that Yoffe recruited was also a woman and no less a maverick. Aviva Rabinovich also grew up on a farm, but in Israel near Rehovoth. As a child, her constant forays into the fields to bring back plants and animals baffled her immigrant parents. At age seventeen she ran away to join the Palmach. During her five years of service in the noted Har El division, she was involved in many of the most decisive battles of Israel's War of Independence. She thinks that in later years veterans of the unit, among them Arik Sharon, Rafael Eitan, and Yizhak Rabin, listened to her ecological ravings only because they remember her as the only woman wounded during the War while charging an enemy position.[109]
After the war, Rabinovich settled on Kibbutz Kabri, where she still lives. She raised a family and taught high-school biology, chemistry, and physics. By age forty, her command of botany and ecology was so impres-sive that traditionally inflexible Hebrew University allowed her to skip formal B.A. requirements and complete her graduate studies in a few years. In 1969, at the recommendation of a staffer, Avraham Yoffe asked to meet her. Rabinovich chewed Yoffe out for starting their interview late, and he immediately hired her.[110] It was a good match. Rabinovich re-mained affiliated with the NRA for twenty-seven years.
Regardless of their differences, the motley crew assembled during the 1960s universally adored Yoffe, perhaps because he never tried to hide his flaws. He was a demanding boss with a temper and had a hard time stay-ing on budget, but he readily delegated authority and backed up his work-ers. He was also unapologetically autocratic. The eleven-person Authority, to which he formally was subservient, quickly became a rubber stamp. By 1970, there was rarely a quorum at meetings.[111]
NATURAL ENEMIES
There is nothing like an external antagonist to unify a team. The Jewish National Fund played this role perfectly for the NRA staff. Problems began even before the Authority's inception. There was no love lost between
Yoffe also had no love for Yosef Weitz, still the central figure at the JNF during the 1960s. He resented the JNF's enormous budget and the way Weitz could waltz into the offices of his Second Aliyah cronies Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and even Ben-Gurion and extract huge funds and concessions under the guise of Zionism.[112] (Of course Yoffe did the exact same thing with pals from his own generation.)
There were other areas of friction. NRA field staff complained about the JNF forests' impact on wildlife. Animals had to abandon the forests for lack of food and began to go down to the valleys and bother the farmers. Then they became the Authority's problem.[113] Aviva Rabinovich elevated the ac-rimony to a new level. Her professional expertise enabled her to explore the relationship between geology and botany, and her surveys found fascinating correlations between rock formations and plant types. Not surprisingly, the JNF's monocultures were an affront to her sense of ecological integrity.
Rabinovich's vituperative attacks on the JNF in any and all public forums often bordered on abuse. Her critique did not always fall on deaf ears, how-ever, and although she remains a particularly reviled figure for most JNF of-ficials, some admit that she influenced their thinking.[114] Indeed, during the 1980s, the JNF placed her on their research committee, and she became an active lecturer in their professional training sessions. Within her own or-ganization, some critics found her continued fixation on forestry (even after the JNF clearly changed their approach) out of line. More important, it led to neglect of other, more important topics, such as the military's redeploy-ment in the Negev during the 1980s after evacuating the Sinai.[115]
Generally the Nature Reserves Authority received good reviews. The truth of the matter was that if Yoffe's personal charm could not win over critics, then the sheer breadth of the NRA's achievements could. In 1971, during the peak of the Yoffe years, Israel's State Comptroller re-viewed the Authority's operations. He found plenty to criticize. Safety in the reserves was not addressed properly; jobs were never filled through a formal tender, but on the basis of an interview with Yoffe or his deputy; presigned checks were left in the hands of underlings who had no authority to make purchases; there were no personnel records
THE NEXT GENERATION
In 1978 Yoffe turned sixty-five. He was a member of the Knesset and was ready to step down after fourteen years directing the NRA. There were two clear candidates to replace him: Adir Shapira and Uzi Paz. Paz was much older, with more experience, and better versed in the science of nature protection. He also challenged Yoffe more on professional issues. On the other hand, although Shapira had never been a high-ranking mil-itary officer, he had a much more forceful and authoritarian personality. Yoffe chose him over Paz.
Shapira maintained the general momentum that Yoffe had started. Expansion continued. For instance, in April 1979, the nascent Environmental Protection Service empowered the Authority's rangers to regulate oil pollution in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Mediterranean coast.[117] During the late 1970s the Authority reached its peak number of workers—four hundred, most of them in the field.[118]
Under Shapira, the NRA modified its strategy toward the Negev. Shapira commissioned a plan for a Ramon Crater reserve in August 1979; it was approved by the government only in 1982.[119] This was among the first of the large desert reserves. At the same time, the NRA set its sights on the forty-one thousand hectares of the dark granite Eilat mountains that make up the southern tip of the country.[120] Toward the end of the 1980s, when Ariyeh Deri took over as Minister of the Interior, the process moved into higher gear. Deri was the wunderkind of the new Orthodox-Sephardi party, Shas. He was a young Yeshiva genius who had hardly served in the army. Unintimidated by the military, he did not hesitate to declare nature reserves in the south. From the perspective of sheer magnitude, Deri should go down as the Greenest interior minister in Israeli history.[121]
Because 38 percent of the lands in reserves overlap with military train-ing grounds, the actual breadth of preservation in the Negev may be overstated. Section 23 of the National Parks and Nature Reserves Law frees security forces from complying with its provisions. Technically the
In practice, the Authority tries to reach a consensus with the army on three classifications of land usage in their reserves: nonshooting areas, air force grounds, and tank training grounds. The latter suffer considerable damage, but the massive areas set aside as safety zones around the periph-ery of firing ranges remain unharmed.
AN AMBIVALENT QUEST FOR GOOD SCIENCE
From the Authority's inception, its field staff contained many talented in-dividuals who quickly attained considerable practical knowledge. Alon Galili still wears his NRA T-shirt, even though he is no longer formally on its staff. Galili's fame/notoriety comes largely from his work as head of the Green Patrol (see Chapter 10). At his home at Sdeh Boqer, it takes little to get him talking about nature preservation. His story is typical of the first generation of workers who joined Yoffe in the 1960s. A kibbutznik from Ein ha-Shofet, he began his conservation career at the SPNI. Galili would compensate for his lack of academic training by sheer proximity. When asked to draft a conservation strategy for wild boars, he literally lived with the pigs for six months—dyeing them, tagging them, marking hooves. The task completed, it was on to porcupines and gazelles.[123]
Yoffe often preferred the common-sense orientation that his field staff brought with them to the more ponderous deliberations of academics. Paz, whose own perspective was colored by his years as an SPNI inspector, was considered the senior scientific voice in the Authority. Yoffe also under-stood that this was not enough and cited “limited local experience” for his heavy reliance on foreign expertise. His workers remember his frequent trips abroad under the guise of selling Israel bonds. While “in the neigh-borhood,” he would drum up donations and scientific backing for his own preservation projects.[124]
In 1968 Yoffe brought a delegation headed by Sir Peter Scott and other leaders from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to Israel. Its mission was to offer advice about the management of open spaces; its recommendations provided the conceptual strategy for the
Part of the attraction of foreign scientists for Yoffe may have been that it freed him from the Israeli academic establishment. Although everyone remembers him as a good listener, he often found local scientists unrealis-tic. One of the results of Yoffe's ambivalence toward science was the lack of a systematic, empirical approach to internal decision making. For in-stance, the scientific community could not decide whether reintroduction of gazelles in the Golan Heights was a good idea (owing to high seasonal humidity). In 1968 rangers found an ibex skull in the mountains. It alone was taken as sufficient proof of past wildlife survival to move ahead with a major relocation project.[125]
The generation that came to the Nature Reserves Authority from the SPNI had tremendous practical knowledge about animals. The problem was that they rarely converted it into a scientifically usable form. Anecdotal information survived through a haphazard oral tradition.[126] When he became Director, Adir Shapira decided to change this.
When Uzi Paz decided to take a leave of absence to complete his doc-torate, Shapira took advantage of his departure to create a new department with Aviva Rabinovich at its head. Among the first things Rabinovich did was establish scientific criteria for the delineation of reserves, first in the Galilee and then on a national level. Dozens of graduate students were funded to generate the data from the field that would be required for de-tailed biological mapping. Rabinovich established professional advisory committees to assist the NRA in its work, and an extensive educational program was set up to give rangers advanced training to supplement their skills. Rabinovich established a controlled-grazing initiative based on eco-logical principles that for the first time allowed herds inside reserves in order to balance the flora of the area.
There were many practical reasons for upgrading the NRA's scientific capabilities. Advocacy was strengthened in all areas of activity if it was backed by even modest expert opinion. Rabinovich became the NRA's sci-entific “hired gun” in its arguments with Maatz (Israel's highway con-struction agency), the JNF, the Bedouin, and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Scientific self-reliance intensified the rift between the NRA on the one hand and the academic community on the other, as well as with the SPNI, which often felt shut out.[127] At the same time, the elevated influence of inhouse
Safriel embraced the challenge, but immediately encountered systemic problems. There was little follow-up in monitoring the success of manage-ment strategies. Safriel pressed the staff to frame its activities in a scientific context, with a null hypothesis that could be evaluated. This was not the way the pragmatic field staff was accustomed to working, and resistance was great. Inspectors became embittered and muttered about scientists who were only interested in their research findings. After she returned from a scientific mission to Guatemala, Rabinovich was unhappy with her succes-sor's new, academic orientation. She felt that Safriel was out of touch with the reality of the field and opposed his attempt to shift expertise and geo-graphic information system (GIS) databases from the NRA to the univer-sities. To this day she cannot forgive Safriel for dismissing several veteran NRA field scientists.[128] In the ensuing tensions, NRA Director Baidatz backed his Chief Scientist, along with his personnel and policy changes.
When Dan Perry took over as Authority Director from Baidatz, he re-verted to the more traditional, pragmatic approach. Perry had come through the system as an SPNI recruit from Shachal. Self-taught, with considerable field experience, Perry was quite knowledgeable. Safriel felt that Perry was not interested in consulting with a scientist at all. It did not take long for Safriel to tender his resignation.[129]
The process of enhanced technical sophistication at the Authority, how-ever, was unstoppable and probably had little to do with any given person-ality. By the 1990s, science was built into the fabric of the agency's culture. The computerized ecological databases that Aviva Rabinovich had pioneered during the early 1980s now contained hundreds of thousands of observa-tions of natural assets and resources, ranging from the genetic sources of grains and cultivated plants to plants in the wild and fungi. They are sup-plemented by a GIS, computerized-mapping department. The Authority also initiated long-term research ventures, receiving international funding for monitoring specific species, controlled-grazing programs in protected wood-lands, and predator-prey balance.[130] Each NRA region has a biologist who works alongside the rangers. The level of formal training among field staff
The NRA annual gazelle count is instructive, for instance. Each year the Authority undertakes an inventory of the local stock of gazelles, checking the age and sex distribution of dorcas gazelles and a range of other wildlife. If the survey is done incompletely, results can be misleading. In 1991 Daphna Lavi, the southern region biologist, repeatedly asked that the count be discontinued until a more reliable protocol could be implemented.
When her request was denied, she fired off a scathing report to the NRA's Yedion circular: “All told, the count consumed 110 work days,” she railed. “It produced very few conclusions, and these are not useful at all. …I again rec-ommend presenting the problem of the Negev gazelles to a scientist who will address the subject in an intelligent fashion…”[131] In such an open and critical institutional culture, the days when a director could run things on in-tuition alone seemed as remote as ancient history.
THE WATCHDOG BARKS
Relations between the SPNI and the NRA remained complicated. Even after the wildflower success, the earlier organizational divorce left a bitter aftertaste. Yoffe thought that the SPNI pushed its nose into areas where it had no business. There was also a sense that its unrelenting criticism was tainted with self-interested motives.
On the human level, however, there were close ties. Most of the NRA's professional staff had once been affiliated with the SPNI. Such relation-ships could lead to awkward situations at times. In fact, the values of staff members were practically identical. Disagreements were primarily over tactics and arose from institutional constraints.
When the two entities managed to work together, nature was the benefici-ary. For instance, while the SPNI conducted rallies to stop the proposed power station along the Taninim Stream Reserve in the 1970s, Uzi Paz was lobbying the Knesset on behalf of the NRA. Politically it was a difficult case, because the Hadera mayor, Dov Barizilai, was a right-wing Heirut party (later Likud) member, outside the traditional realm of the nature community's influence. However, Heirut chairman Menahem Begin agreed with Paz that national in-terests should trump local ones, and he overruled his party member.[132]
But just as often the NRA and SPNI fought like cats and dogs. No issues were more divisive over the course of the two organizations' long relation-ship than the access to and development of nature reserves. These involve classic dilemmas with which wildlife managers wrestle around the world; the questions are about ethics as much as they are about management.
Reserves are set aside for a variety of purposes. Some are declared be-cause of the existence of a rare species, others for their scenic value. Still others are declared because they are representative of various stages in ecological development. And, of course, there are critical habitats. The functional diversity of the reserves requires flexible management. Officially, the NRA has established three kinds of reserves:
Developed reserves, with basic infrastructure to accommodate the public (e.g., roads, trails, parking lots, and sometimes even picnic tables and rest rooms)
Open reserves, where development is limited to a few trails and the occasional sign
Closed reserves, which contain elements or processes too sensitive to allow visitor exposure
The issue of charging for entry into reserves has been controversial from the minute that debate began on the law. Some see admission fees as inherently undemocratic; others counter that the public will appreciate re-serves more if they pay for them.[133] Under Shapira's leadership, the NRA took the latter view. In November 1970, to cover “operating expenses,” the Ein Gedi and the Tel Dan reserves began to charge admission fees.[134] Others would follow.
The financial perspective of each group informs their institutional po-sition on the issue. The NRA, always short on funds, is expected to raise much of its own budget, and the entrance fees at the dozen or so “com-mercial” reserves generate significant revenues. Conversely, among its many functions, the SPNI serves as a de facto consumer advocate for Israel's hiking and nature-loving community. The organization is also in the tour-guiding business and absorbs some of the costs of the entrance fees. The issue of closing reserves is more complex. Although the SPNI un-derstands the need to let natural systems regenerate, it feels entitled to ac-cess, on educational grounds, and is quick to cry “elitism.”[135]
Far more heated than the debate over entrance fees is the question of the reserves' physical development. Even the seemingly benign marking of hiking trails to show walkers the way engenders criticism. Here, it is the Authority who can cry “elitism.” Proponents argue that the trails increase safety and allow the hiker to focus on nature rather than on not getting lost. It is also a question of preservation: Trails minimize human interfer-ence with natural processes. The NRA approach holds that people are guests in the reserves. Almost without exception they are not allowed to stay the night. Then there is the issue of handicapped access. Recently, the NRA constructed wheelchair trails in the Tel Dan and Huleh reserves for
The clear intent of the law is to develop national parks but leave re-serves untouched. But by statute the NRA was authorized to undertake development activities, setting up buildings and facilities and managing, arranging, and running them, along with services, for visitors and hik-ers.[138] From the outset, infrastructure accompanied the declaration of many reserves.[139] The streams of Dan and Banias, the oasis in Ein Gedi, and the waterfall at Tanur all enjoyed these improvements, some of which incensed the SPNI watchdogs.
Amidst all the huffing, little serious effort is made to consider the ac-tual motivation behind and validity of the Authority's development ac-tivity. The underlying impulse typically is not recreation (as is the case in initiatives in the national parks), but preservation. By managing the public, nature is better protected.
As NRA Director, Dan Perry was especially reviled by activists when these issues arose, because he was so completely unapologetic. Now retired, Perry has a senior statesman persona in the international conser-vation community, owing in part to his graying beard as well as his per-manent limp from an unfortunate meeting with a land mine in the field. He consults frequently, and he still represents the pragmatic end of the NRA spectrum. Perry claims that compromising to accommodate people has been the key to the Authority's success from the start. Increasingly the world recognizes that reserves need to integrate local populations into their long-term strategies, leading to the concept of biosphere reserva-tions.[140] Jordan's Dana reserve has intrigued visiting Israelis, but Perry claims that in practice, Israel has for years been making similar arrange-ments in administering reserves. In the case of the Ramon Crater, the NRA concluded that if they did not want jeeps and motorists to cut a thou-sand trails across the crater, they had better give the public a reasonable road to drive on.[141]
Over time, the NRA's pragmatic approach won over most “purists.” The Coral Beach in Eilat was one of the first reserves declared in Israel (November 26, 1964) and was also among the first that charged admission fees. After seeing that the five-hundred-meter-long beach was fenced in, NRA Director Shapira had a kiosk and shower facilities installed. As part of the development package, he even allowed an undersea observa-tory to be built at the reserve's southern tip. The biologists who worked for him in the Authority were initially furious but later had a change of heart when unprotected areas sustained massive damage.[142]
Even under the watchful eyes of the NRA staff, the reef in the reserve began to suffer, primarily because snorkelers were unintentionally tram-pling the sensitive corals on their way into the water. Although slow in responding, the NRA ultimately built concrete bridges to enable swim-mers to hop over the shallow, most vulnerable section of the reef. The management of the reserve also began to limit the number of visitors in the reserve at any given time, based on estimates of carrying capacity.[143]
DANCING WITH LEOPARDS
Reserves often cannot provide sufficient habitat and refuge for the crea-tures that inhabit them. Predators in particular need an enormous range to find their meals. The spillover of wildlife causes problems for rural com-munities around the world—from East African elephants to the coyotes of the American west. In Israel gazelles happily munch on lettuce, and foxes raid chicken coops (and have acquired a taste for watermelon). Plastic irri-gation pipes are favorite targets of confused woodpeckers and provide teething rings for young hyenas.
This tension between human settlement and wildlife habitat captured na-tional attention with the NRA's efforts to study and save the leopards in the Judean desert. Although a larger, northern subspecies (Panthera pardus tul-liana) has apparently disappeared, Israel's southern subspecies of leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) remains the natural “high carnivore” of Israel's desert.[144] It is a very large cat with black spots on light brown or white fur, a large solid head, round ears, round eyes, long whiskers, four nipples, and a tail that is more than three-quarters the length of its body.[145] Leopards can be ferocious, and any animal in the desert is a potential item on its menu. The cats live amidst the desert's rocky cliffs, from among which they pounce on their prey, typically hyraxes, ibex, and porcupines.
In 1863 and 1864 the British priest and zoology enthusiast H. B. Tristam traveled across Palestine on the most extensive of his four local sa-faris.[146] He reported that “the range of the leopard is broader than the cheetah in Israel, but their number is smaller. It is found around the Dead Sea, in the Gilead, in the Bashan, and occasionally in forested areas of the West. A wonderful pair was hunted in the Carmel while we were there.”[147]
The many places he found in the region with traditional Arab names that included the word nimr (leopard) testified to its versatility. In 1930 the Yishuv's leading zoologist, Israel Aharoni, reported that leopards could be considered extinct in Palestine, yet time and again they would resurface. When a female was shot in Safed in 1942, three of her cubs survived. They
The little that is known about Israel's leopard species is the result of re-search by Giora Ilani, yet some people blame this fascinating man for lead-ing these animals down the road to ruin. Ilani's biography runs parallel to those of his generation of nature professionals. He grew up on Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. Before he enlisted in the army, in 1958 he began working as a volunteer for the SPNI. It was Ilani who actually invented the annual “gazelle count” ritual, long before it was officially adopted by the NRA. During an inventory in 1964 he discovered a new subspecies of indigenous Israeli gazelle (Gazella gazella acaciae).[149]
Ilani was even more dedicated to wildlife than his colleagues. Avraham Yoffe once told him, “If you were in charge of this country, then animals would be free and people would be in cages.”[150] And in fact Ilani made few friends in the Arava Valley when he shared his belief that people should be banned from living inside the Syro-African rift, leaving it, as it had been historically, for the animals.
Of the twenty streams that drain across the Judean desert to the Dead Sea, only two have water year-round: Nahal Arugot and Nahal David. They define the boundaries of the Ein Gedi oasis. With no direct road to the area until after the 1967 War, Ein Gedi held a special mystique for travelers.
After the creation of the State, Kibbutz Ein Gedi was established south of the oasis. It tapped the streams for its fields, orchards, and highly prof-itable guest house. Yet it remained a lovely site in the middle of the stark, steep, jejune landscape. Bedouin, with their weakness for hunting, no longer passed through the area. The wildlife population in the area, espe-cially the ibex, rebounded. In the anticipated positive-feedback loop of food chains, the leopards soon discovered the oasis.
In the Ein Gedi region, there had never been a confirmed leopard sight-ing until Yossi Feldman, who ran the Ein Gedi Field School, reported one in 1969.[151] At the time, Giora Ilani was working as chief zoologist for the NRA. After Feldman's experience, Ilani started to seek them out. It would take him almost five years of following tracks to meet one face to face. The memory of the triumphant moment still moves him: “On October 19, 1974, I managed to photograph one. It was the first time in history that a leopard was photographed in the Middle East. (I remember the date, be-cause the next day my son was born.) After the photograph I cried nonstop,
Many would argue that Ilani remembers his son's birthday because of the leopard. Before Ilani's interest in leopards becamse so keen, most of his focus had been on the hyenas that roam Israel's deserts. The experience with the leopard completely changed his life. Not everyone in the Authority was as enthusiastic about his initiative. But Avraham Yoffe, pre-dictably, was captivated. He gave Ilani his full support.[153]
Ilani became extremely resourceful at finding the leopards. It was al-most as if he had developed a sixth sense to detect the distinct four-toed paw print, the droppings with the encrusted hair of the last meal, and the smell of urine that marked the leopard's territory. Ilani would offer tips to help find leopards by watching the ibex and hyraxes. They developed a dis-tinct warning call when they sensed the presence of this most deadly pred-ator.[154] By 1974 he had fifty-one confirmed observations of leopards in the area and hundreds of definitive signs.
Ilani pressed on to the next stage. He left food for the animals, stunned them, and then collared them for continuous monitoring. Ilani gave all of them names and befriended them. Almost twenty years later he and his wife still argue over which female was in which wadi. The transmitters en-abled Ilani to reach a new level of intimacy with the animals. For instance, he could identify the female “Shlomzion” as a young virgin and record her first sexual encounter—a three-day orgy which involved sixty separate acts of copulation (per day) with the virile “Alexander Yanai”! Ninety-one days later, two cubs were born in the very cave where the revelry took place. Attempts to visit her were foiled by an angry male hovering above the cave. Ilani was never able to ascertain whether the roaring leopard was “Alexander Yanai,” the protective father, or “Katushion,” a rival suitor.
From the start, Kibbutz Ein Gedi opposed the project. They were nei-ther intrigued with the racy nuances of leopard mating rituals nor thrilled about sharing their oasis with a savage predator. Even Ilani acknowledged that if you startled a leopard at night, it could kill you in self-defense. Such concerns became more palpable in 1975 when leopards began to penetrate the kibbutz looking for food. In the nearby community of Neveh Zohar, a leopard ate fourteen cats. In 1979, “Bavta” ate a couple of sheep in the kib-butz's petting zoo but was shot and wounded before she could return to her cubs. Residents responded to the presence of the leopards by planting poison bait. In Ein Boqeq leopards were killed with strychnine.[155]
The NRA moved to assuage local concerns. Avraham Yoffe felt that the people of Ein Gedi should see their new neighbors as a boon to tourism,
In general it is hard to enlist public support for predators. People enjoy watching them in documentaries, but they become edgy when they meet them face to face. During the same period, Giora Ilani served as an expert witness in a 1976 prosecution against an illegal shooting of a hyena. Ilani explained to the judge, in his meticulous fashion, the essential ecological role that the animal plays in clearing the remains of dead animals. The judge retorted that while the letter of the law required him to issue a fine, he was completely sympathetic with the defendant.[158]
In 1982 the NRA installed an electric fence around the kibbutz to keep the leopards out.[159] It reduced the number of infiltrations, but the cats be-came crafty and learned that the fence short-circuited during rainstorms. Then they would come in and feast on the local pets. The farmers took matters into their own hands, getting out the traps and the strychnine.
The numbers of leopards continued to drop. Females, who were the most adventurous hunters, were disproportionately hunted down. Although they can live past the age of twenty-five, they are fertile only from age three until eleven. The decline in fertile females created a macabre dynamic. The male impulse to perpetuate his own genetic mate-rial became a major threat to species survival. As long as they nurse, fe-males are infertile. Male leopards naturally seek to kill the cubs and thereby hasten female ovulation. As the population dwindled, problems of inbreeding and poor genetic diversity began to set in.[160] A 1992 scientific survey estimated that there were between eight and seventeen leopards in the Negev High Mountains, including at least one fertile female.[161] But none remained in Ein Gedi and the Judean desert.
THE LEOPARD'S LEGACY
Ilani's dismissal from the Authority in 1990 enhanced his legendary per-sona within nature circles and rendered his work a subject of even greater controversy. Ein Gedi residents are the most hostile of Ilani's detractors. Many claim that if he had not stuck his nose in, leopards would have re-tained their fear of humans and remained inconspicuously in the reserve. Uzi Paz, never happy with the way the leopard project was run (including the feeding of leopards), remains critical. He felt that Ilani had become too
Professor Lev Fishelson rejected the criticism out of hand and was ex-tremely favorable about Ilani's actual fieldwork. “Giora may not have been great with public relations, but he was amazing with the leopards. He un-derstood them so well. The problem is you can't catch leopards. You can ei-ther kill them or bring them to a zoo.”[163]
Others saw the failure as an institutional one for the Authority, which never succeeded in convincing local residents of the leopards' value. The leopards were always perceived as the Authority's problem. If the kibbutz had ever felt that they had a real interest in the reserve, it would have been the best of protectors.[164]
Uriel Safriel, Chief Scientist at the NRA, made the decision to release Ilani. He rejected the view that Ilani's familiarity with the leopards emboldened them to enter the kibbutz. Rather, it was the availability of easy food sources. Dan Perry, NRA Director during this period, shared this view and is surprisingly blase´ about the ramifications:
In the case of the leopards, reality and myth really diverge. Their survival may be an ecological miracle, but ten to twenty predators have virtually no biological significance. If we had put the same efforts in other areas, it would have been more efficacious. It may have appeared important for image and publicity, but really the leopards do not need us. We need to preserve their habitat and not concern ourselves with them.[165]
With ballpark estimates for the minimum viable population size of a species ranging from 50 (in the short run) to 500 (for long-term viability), the handful of Israel's leopards surviving in the wild are so far below sus-tainable levels as to appear tottering on the brink.[166] Most of Israel's zoo-logical experts actually are cautiously optimistic about the leopards' long-term chances of survival. The question optimists face is: Have we learned anything from Ein Gedi's disastrous encounters during the 1980s with local leopards? There may, in fact, be some room for encouragement. Israel's en-dangered raptor population suffered owing due to the reduction in available carrion after improvements in veterinary medicine and animal husbandry practices were introduced. To compensate, the NRA established feeding sta-tions that leave carcasses to the birds (as well as opportunistic hyenas, foxes, and wolves). The electric company has even taken pains to reduce the risk of electrocution of vultures.[167] The tourist potential of such active conservation efforts is only now being tapped, yet if the locals are not part of the solution, they will once again become part of the problem. This became painfully
In the meantime leopards continue to pop up unexpectedly. For exam-ple, one evening in 1997 Roni King, the NRA biologist from Eilat, re-sponded to an emergency call from the Negev town of Mitzpeh Ramon. A female leopard had been prowling the city streets before collapsing in ex-haustion in the courtyard of a local yeshiva. King thinks that even though the cat was young (according to her sharp teeth), she had just grown weary of hunting down food in the desert. After she was fattened up and fortified at the NRA Hai Bar facility, the leopard was released.
Then, on December 21, 2001, shuffling into the cold dark of a desert night after watching a film at the Kibbutz Ein Gedi auditorium, the audi-ence was greeted by a pair of fearsome eyes. A leopard had come back. There were already signs: Five goats had been devoured at the kibbutz petting zoo earlier that week. As it left its prey behind, this particular visitor was assumed to be a male. Yankele Gal-Paz, the kibbutz general sec-retary, told the press that the returning leopards did not alarm the kibbutz members, who “would do what was needed to protect them—and them-selves.”[169]
The leopard remains a symbol for Israel's nature lovers. The SPNI puts the animal's image on its promotional materials and its MasterCard. Although the jury is still out on this case, the NRA experience offers a warning about the perils of sentimentality. As Israel becomes more crowded, a laissez-faire approach will only hasten the clash between wildlife and humans.
RECLAIMING DIVERSITY: THE HAI BAR INITIATIVE
Perhaps the NRA's most famous example of proactive management to increase biological diversity is its Hai Bar (literally “Wild Life”) reintroduction program. It too is the subject of controversy. In 1960, when beekeeping was still synonymous with nature preservation, Uri Tzon es-tablished the Hai Bar Association. Its goal was to return the animals that roamed through the pages of the Bible to their ancient land. Money was raised from donations, primarily through an American-based Holy Land Conservation Fund. The idea appealed to Avraham Yoffe's dramatic sensi-bilities, and the NRA adopted the project. Indeed, in 1971 Israel's State Comptroller reproached NRA workers for taking advantage of the requirement
It took two years to finish fencing off an area of thirteen thousand dunams south of Kibbutz Yotvata in the southern Arava, but the Hai Bar facility was ready in 1968.[171] In 1973 a smaller facility for Mediterranean animals was established in the Carmel Forest. Beginning in 1968 with three pairs of Somali wild asses, the rare creatures slowly began to arrive.
At that time the reintroduction of lost species was a new venture, and international conservation professionals had not yet developed standard procedures. Today, reintroduction is common, and the IUCN publishes for-mal guidelines.[172] In running the Hai Bar program, Yoffe went mostly on intuition. Ever a maximalist, he sought any animal that he could get his hands on that may have lived in Israel in years gone by.[173]
The return of each species had its own drama. Fallow deer barely made it onto the last El Al plane out of Tehran after the overthrow of the Shah and Iran's severing of diplomatic ties with Israel.[174] Oryxes had been completely destroyed in the wild, and international conservation organizations were hesitant to entrust Israel with even a few. But eight of these majestic white herbivores, whose long horns were mistaken by Crusaders for those of a unicorn, arrived from the San Diego Zoo in 1978.[175] From Ethiopia came ostriches. Addaxes, originally from the Sahara, were procured from a zoo.
The southern facility opened as a safari attraction in 1977 to cover pro-ject expenses, but the objective was reintroduction into the wild.[176] The addition of a “predator center” did little to help the project's image. This part of the facility keeps leopards, karakuls, wolves, foxes, and hyenas in small pens and more closely resembles a mediocre zoo than anything else. It may have increased the attractiveness of the facility for tourists, but it is still not enough to make the park break even.
Ironically, the indigenousness of many Hai Bar animals is often called into question. The asslike onagers are a hybrid of an Iranian and a central Asian subspecies, produced in a Dutch zoo.[177] The addax is probably of Saharan[178] or Indian origin,[179] not from Israel. Jordanian zoologists were polite when they were presented with a gift of ostriches during their first visit to Israel. Privately they marveled at how a sophisticated program like Israel's could consider releasing a species into the wild that bore little re-semblance to what they believed were the true indigenous subspecies. The unfortunate birds are today stuck in a small pen in a Jordanian reserve.[180]
As Chief Scientist of the Authority, Uriel Safriel realized that for polit-ical reasons he could not kill the initiative. Using scientific criteria about carrying capacity, he managed to downsize the expectations of the project,
In retrospect, Saltz believes that Yoffe made two major oversights: in failing to anticipate the enormous costs of running Hai Bar facilities and in failing to ensure the authenticity of the animals' endemic identity.[182] But he points out that reintroduction has become an integral part of con-servation biology internationally. The debate therefore is about priorities, not right or wrong.
The Hai Bar initiative's bottom line is reintroduction, and here the ver-dict seems to be in. By April 1982 the first group of wild asses were as-signed color codes, tagged, and released.[183] On May 15 some disappeared near the Jordanian border;[184] it is not clear whether they were eaten by predators or, as Giora Ilani insists, shot by Jordanian soldiers.[185] Those who chose not to emigrate are doing well, with roughly a hundred animals in and around the Ramon Crater.[186]
After the Carmel Hai Bar population of fallow deer reached two hun-dred in September 1996, the first group received its “visas” to the Nahal Kziv reserve.[187] Slowly, this animal, painfully shy around humans, began to reproduce in the wild and spread into the surrounding JNF forests, even making the occasional foray to local farms.[188] In March 1997, twenty-one oryxes were released in the central Arava. They will proba-bly compete with the local gazelles, but they appear to be surviving in the wild.[189]
There is a legitimate case for attributing ecological significance to the reintroductions that brought back large grazers, an unfilled ecological niche, because Bedouin herds are no longer in the reserves today. There are tactical justifications, too, because the animals increase the perceived value of sensitive areas, making their preservation easier.
The Hai Bar's real benefit, however, is psychological. Conservationists have a sense of always being on the defensive. Reintroduction programs turn the tables. Tourists, of course, love the biblical drama, and even the cynics cannot deny the excitement of chancing upon one of these won-derful animals while hiking in the wild.[190] At a deeper level, there is also a dimension of justice. After so many years of excess, humans should be
“NEW DEAL” FOR NATURE
In 1994 Minister of the Environment Yossi Sarid went to talk with the Prime Minister about the Nature Reserves Authority. “There's no logic in having two separate agencies for parks and for reserves any more,” he told him. “No one can tell the difference anyway.” “You're right,” Yitzhak Rabin replied. “But what Minister would be willing to cede departments under his control?” Indeed, bureaucratic reshuffling has traditionally hap-pened in Israel only as part of coalition agreements and elections. But Sarid did the unthinkable. He went to talk to Minister of Agriculture Yaakov Zur and simply put the case before him. Zur listened and on the spot responded: “You're right.”[191]
It would take almost four years and a change in government before these changes received the Knesset's statutory blessing.[192] The amendment finally passed the Knesset in January 1998. By then, the Ministry of Agriculture was no longer the powerful agency it had been in 1962. Agriculture in Israel was in decline, increasingly irrelevant to the country's high-tech economy. So after thirty-five years, the Nature Reserves and the National Parks systems were merged, just as Yan Yanai first proposed, only under the auspices of a Minister of the Environment. It is not yet clear whether the new institutional supervision bodes well for nature. Dan Perry believes that historically there were clear advantages to being associated with the Ministry of Agriculture in spite of the undeniable conflicts of in-terest, from chemical poisonings to water allocation contests.
Although it would be unreasonable to expect today's heirs to the NRA legacy to be as ambitious as Yoffe, many observers have sensed a gradual enervation in the vigilance and scope of the NRA's agenda. Perhaps this change is just a sign that new institutions like the Environmental Ministry are now on the scene. The Authority may not need to go as far afield as it used to, doing battle against pesticide abuse and oil spills. Still, there is a growing perception that to maintain an image of moderation, directors subconsciously (or sometimes openly) build concessions into their opening bargaining positions.
This is altogether different from honest mistakes, which are inevitable. For instance, when Israel was leaving the Sinai during the early 1980s, the Authority's management focused its attention on the military redeploy-ment going on in the Negev. Precious little effort went into confining the
In other crucial battles, however, rather than standing up for nature, the Authority has maintained a reticence. For example, Highway 6 will have a devastating effect on Israel's wildlife, yet the NRA has done little to bol-ster opposition efforts. It is hard to imagine Avraham Yoffe sitting on the sidelines in a matter of such importance. In the Jordan River case, the NRA's conciliatory position undermined the efforts of the SPNI and other environmentalists who fought for preservation. A gap between the field staff, for whom it is relatively easy to hold uncompromising opinions, and central management in Jerusalem, who face political constraints, is un-avoidable. Yet recently it seems to have grown.
Part of the problem with the Authority is the dilemma created by its quasi-independent status. The Ministry of Finance has come to expect the NRA to generate much of its own budget, even though it is a government entity. This creates an excruciating dilemma for management, which desper-ately needs revenues to continue the Authority's many activities but which must often pay a price. Yet, in 2001, when a new Minister of the Environment, Tzachi ha-Negbi, attempted to funnel the Authority's budget through his Ministry, nature advocates, including Uzi Paz, called foul and at-tacked the Minister as undermining the agency's traditional independence.[195]
Ultimately the ministerial home of the Authority is less important than the quality of its leadership. After a lackluster performance by Shaika Erez, a former general, Aaron Vardi was appointed as the first Director of the combined Nature and National Parks Authority. He too was a senior military man. A personable kibbutznik, Vardi had been an effective Director General at the Ministry of the Environment. After the 1996 elec-tions, Rafael Eitan, the new Minister, immediately replaced him, only to remember that he actually knew and liked Vardi from the army. So he gave him the tedious, eight-month-long task of merging two beauracracies that had competed for decades.
To be sure, by the 1990s, the institutional divisions between the two agencies seemed wasteful and anachronistic. As more nature reserves charged entrance fees and national parks came to hold increasingly large tracts of unmanaged lands around their historical attractions,[196] it was often unclear whether there were any salient differences. Creating a shared identity and common sense of purpose, however, was hardly an overnight phenomenon. The combined forces of six hundred workers (350 and 250 respectively) offered a formidable team to preserve the country's
A BASIS FOR HOPE
Nature preservation in Israel is a success story. Bushes and indigenous trees have begun to flourish, relieved of the pressures of overgrazing by goats. The wildflowers are back as never before. The gazelle count now reaches into the thousands.[198] There are even increases in numbers among Israel's thirty-four bat species after so many years of their being hunted down and gassed in their caves, unjustifiably maligned as enemies of agriculture.[199]
One could also paint a completely different picture. Only a handful of Arava gazelles survive south of Yotvata, and their numbers are dwin-dling.[200] Birds of prey, for example the griffon vulture, rarely nest in Israel. Sand foxes have almost disappeared outside of the Mitzpeh Ramon Crater.[201] Professors Yoram Yom-Tov and Heinrich Mendelssohn of Tel Aviv University, probably the country's most eminent zoologists, estimate that even after three decades of NRA's efforts, 40 percent of vertebrates have either suffered extinction or a substantial drop in numbers during the twentieth century.[202]
Nature preservation also requires constant vigilance: For instance, in 1993, reports surfaced of massive wildflower picking during the springtime by new Russian immigrants. The Ministry of Absorption hastily issued up-dated versions of the standard wildflower message, in foreign languages.[203] It is the new threats, coming from unanticipated directions, however, that are the scariest.
Motorization is one problem that does not receive sufficient atten-tion.[204] Habitats are crisscrossed by divided highways, which lock animals into small “fragmented” areas. Alon Galili has been raising this issue for almost twenty years: “Reptiles can't get across the roads. Rodents can't get over. Maybe a cat can under some circumstances. But on the whole, high-ways close animals in genetically.”[205] Presumably, one solution is to build a system of tunnels under the roadway. Except for gazelles, animals gen-erally like tunnels. They could be coaxed through, tempting them with water and food at the ends. It could make an exciting educational program. But such an initiative requires a commitment.[206]
Even more pernicious may be the vehicles that invade the reserves. All-terrain vehicles, jeeps, and motorbikes bring noise and leave unsightly tire marks everywhere. In the sensitive desert terrain, the signs can last for eons. It is not just a question of aesthetics. The ten thousand 4 4 vehicles
Another new scourge for wildlife has emerged in the form of Thai farmworkers, who have a penchant for trapping animals of all types to supplement their meals. What began as a joke about the Thai workers' willingness to eat anything that moves is suddenly not funny at all. Professor Yoram Yom-Tov reported to a Knesset committee that Thai traps had killed 90 percent of the Golan Heights' gazelle population, which is now on the verge of disappearing.[208]
In 1992 the NRA commissioned an independent review of the condition of the southern reserves.[209] The picture painted by Menahem Abadi was pathetic. Abadi described personnel constraints that made attempts to po-lice the illegal vehicles laughable. Pirate contractors pilfered rocks, sand, and trees. Concomitantly, the pressure from military maneuvers grew more acute as West Bank and Golan firing ranges moved south in antici-pation of geopolitical contraction.[210] Then there were the problems of water and electricity lines, mining concessions, and seismic tests, all of which required roads and infrastructure. And human settlements contin-ued to expand.
Abadi's report saw no alternative for the NRA but to abandon 60 per-cent of the Negev reserve areas and regroup. Feedback by area rangers sug-gests that the report was both too harsh in its generalizations and too defeatist in its recommendations.[211] Yet the problems raised are very real and—without major adjustments—will only get worse. Personnel justifi-ably gripe that the direct investment in nature reserves in countries such as England far exceeds that in Israel, even though the other countries have less to preserve.[212] Many of the northern reserves, such as the lovely Habonim Coastal Park, are too small to be able to hire a resident ranger. These small gems of nature can rapidly turn into garbage dumps, owing to seemingly benign neglect: The NRA continues to plod ahead, preparing the groundwork for the declaration of an additional hundred reserves. However, if the Authority is unable to manage its existing lands success-fully, it seems a futile exercise.
International coordination may offer the greatest opportunity for ex-panding wildlife habitat. Moreover, preservation itself can facilitate interna-tional cooperation. Indeed, nature helped resolve a deadlock that threatened to destroy the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The bone of contention was whether an Israeli interim withdrawal from the West Bank should be 10 or 13 percent.[213] The compromise position set forward in the Wye River Memorandum in November 1998 held that a disputed 3 percent
Wildlife management will never really succeed without a regional strategy. For years Amotz Zahavi has spoken of a binational biosphere park connecting Jordan's Dana and Israel's Shizaf reserves. The Sinai remains largely uninhabited, and leopards may thrive there. Peace negotiations with Jordan have included talk of peace parks, especially what would be billed as “the lowest park on earth,” in the Dead Sea region. There are also partners with whom to work.[214] On the Jordanian side, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature is particularly competent. As a member-ship organization and manager of Jordan's nature reserves system, it is a combination of SPNI and NRA—but smaller than either.[215] Their educa-tional efforts are both diligent and innovative, but they too have a huge task before them. The gaps between the countries are more than political.
Reuven Hefner is the NRA expert on wolves today, much as Giora Ilani used to be for leopards. By collaring them with transmitters he has discov-ered that Israel's desert wolves are nomads and can move as much as forty kilometers in one night in search of food. Many of his wolves cross the bor-der into Jordan and can be followed only by satellite tracking. (As almost all the Arava sand dunes in Israel have been mined for construction, Jordan will continue to have more to offer them than Israel does.) For the wolves, however, it is often a one-way trip. Jordanian colleagues returned three transmitter collars that were taken off wolves shot after crossing the bor-der.[216] Hefner reports that although predators avoid humans in Jordan, hyenas, once in Israel, are not at all afraid of vehicles, and wolves somehow have also learned that they are safe within the Green Line.
If the wolves and the hyenas can sense a difference, then Israel must be doing something right. One feels it amidst the quiet of a reserve when a particularly beautiful flower catches the eye or a herd of ibex scrambles over the rocks. Before long twenty million people will be squeezed in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Whether this insatiable species of ours will find a way to accommodate the other 2600 types of plants and 500 types of animals that also call Israel home remains an open question. If there is any basis for hoping that the answer will be in the affirmative, Israel's Nature and National Parks Authority deserves the credit. It got the country off to a very good start.