The State of Nature in Israel 2023 report, issued by the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, the Israeli National Center for Biodiversity Studies at Tel Aviv University, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Jewish National Fund, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, was published yesterday, and it makes for grim reading. A range of environmental pressures are reducing biodiversity and the number of individuals of threatened species, while numbers of invasive species are on the rise, such as the myna, a species many people love to hate, which has risen seven-fold in the past nine years.
“On the whole, the operations are not encouraging,” says Tamar Dayan, head of the Natural History Museum. “Every endangered species is typically affected by several types of stressors: habitat conversion, catabolism, light, pollutants, agricultural pesticides, and invasive species.”
In Israel, the situation is particularly dangerous. “We are a country that is witnessing a construction boom, and the standard of living is rising. We are a small country in the first place, so the impacts are greater than in other countries. Pollution levels, which are affected by population density. The disappearance of natural areas is a daily occurrence here, as is the disposal of waste in areas where “It is supposed to remain in a natural state. The Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Nature and Parks Authority and the Jewish National Fund are making great efforts, and there are successes, but the task here is very difficult.”
The situation in Israel is worse than in Europe. For example, in the past nine years, the number of bird species nesting in Israel has declined by 17%, a rate of decline four times higher than in Europe. One-third (65) of the bird species that nest in Israel are threatened with extinction. Even the birds we have learned to see as part of our environment, known as “man-following birds,” are in decline, including the common chickadee, blackbird, warbler, dove and wild dove.
In the past thirteen years, the number of individuals of the butterfly species has decreased by 34%. The period of peak butterfly activity has become 30 days later over the past 13 years, apparently as a result of climate change. This change challenges butterflies, because they are not always in sync with the plant species they need for sustenance. More than a third of butterfly species (51 species) are at risk of extinction.
Successes
The good news is that the numbers of species such as sea turtles, green sea turtles, hares and acacia gazelles are rising. “This means that when a major effort is made to conserve a species, it is certainly possible to succeed, but it requires a great deal of effort,” Dayan says.
More than half of mammal species are threatened with extinction. On the other hand, if you are tempted to rejoice in the rise in numbers of golden jackals or foxes, it turns out that their numbers have risen due to the availability of food from waste and agriculture. This is not always good news, especially in the case of the jackal, a common — some say very common — animal that is also a predator, putting other species at risk.
Reptiles are also at risk, with a 58% decline in the abundance of individuals in the sands of the western Negev and a 48% decline in the loess plains of the northern Negev.
Regarding vegetation, 61 invasive species have settled in Israel in the past few decades, and there are more with a high chance of settling. However, the overall measure of vegetation abundance is rising.
What is the effect of war?
Diane: “In the Tecoma area, some thought has gone into where parking spaces and tanks are located, especially in agricultural areas, and that has been very favorable to them. Up north, there seem to be major infrastructure changes, or so I've heard things are being done that were not “Now that the fire season has started, I dread to think how it will end, and I think the devastation has been done, unlike during the Covid pandemic, so great that nature will not benefit from the fact that the population has left the north.”
Something optimistic at the end?
“The fact of performing an in-depth measurement is the beginning of rehabilitation, because once we can know exactly what is happening, we can also deal with it.”
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on May 20, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
