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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


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for annual renewal of hunting permits, to encourage hunters to contribute to the Hai Bar Association.[170]

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,


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however.[181] David Saltz has spent more than a decade writing feasibility studies, overseeing the reintroduction programs, preparing long-range plans for the Hai Bar project, and carrying out postrelease monitoring. His research indicated that five species were acceptable for reintroduction: Persian fallow deer, Arabian oryx, roe deer, Asiatic wild ass, and ostrich. Except for the ostriches (a Sudanese strand that are as vicious as they are stupid), reintroductions are under way for all, and postrelease monitoring is being carried out.

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


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required to do what they can to restore the ecosystems they have so thoughtlessly obliterated.


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