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.