Wildlife in Israel have always been under threat from economic over-development and hunting, including poaching by migrant farm workers. Illegal poaching and outdoor hunting in the country has now reached levels that could soon result in some animal species becoming extinct or unable to naturally sustain themselves in the wild. This revelation was reported in a recent weekend magazine article in Haaretz. Local Druze for instance are hunting porcupine to extinction.

A variety of  wild mammals and birds are at risk, ranging from hoofed mammals such as gazelles and wild boar to smaller creatures such as hares (once plentiful but now scarce), partridges, and at least two species of porcupines.

In addition to the habitats of these animals being diminished by agriculture and housing construction, illegal poaching by hunters (many of them licensed) is becoming a problem that Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority are struggling to cope with.

The Nature and Parks Authority (NPA) is the body that sends out game rangers to patrol open areas where wildlife live. As reported in Haaretz, Dr. Yariv Malihi, wildlife ecologist for the NPA’s central district, made the following foreboding statement regarding the future for many kinds of wildlife – as well as for natural habitats themselves:

“Nature in Israel is fragile and hanging by a thread. It is under assault from every direction: infrastructure, development, activities in the field (including illegal hunting), and the desire of people to live. In recent years, this has been compounded by criminal hunting, which involves night pursuits with the use of projectors, indiscriminate shooting, and intimidation of the wild populations. The animals are in constant stress, and this has a critical influence on their ability to reproduce. This element of stress that hunters inject into their world can bring about the collapse of whole populations that are already at risk.”

The larger hoofed mammals which need more habitat and food supplies to survive are also being threatened by what is now their no. 1 predator : man. Gazelles are hunted illegally for their meat that is sold on the black market for high prices.

Porcupines, a large nocturnal member of the rodent family, are especially prized for their meat by Druze hunters.

Porcupines are often caught in traps baited with vegetables at the entrance to its burrow. If it can’t free itself, the animal is clubbed to death by the hunter, as shooting it damages the meat. Wilds birds, including doves and pigeons, are also hunted as their meat, along with ducks and partridges.

Of the 2,160 hunting licenses still issued each year, the NPA estimates that fewer than 500 people actually hunt for sport. Although many of these try to obey the laws and do not hunt illegally (I used to be one of them until I gave it up more than 12 years ago), many others may be poaching as selling wild game can be quite profitable. Although the law calls for heavy fines, few fines for poaching have ever been issued.

A new law is being considered in which hunting will be discontinued as a sport; only hunters who win permits by lottery will be permitted to hunt wild animals that are considered to be  causing damage to crops and private gardens. The animal that falls mostly into this category is the wild boar, which has managed to coexist with humans although it doesn’t go near them, except to raid gardens and crops.

Changing the hunting laws may help protect endangered and stressed wild animal species, but NPA officials are worried that this could put further strain on the fragile “cultural ecology” that exists between Israeli Arabs, Druze and Jewish populations that live within close proximity to each other in the areas where game is hunted, as well as the country as a whole.

Read more on illegal animal hunting and poaching:

Maltese Hunters Legally Massacre Egypt’s Protected Birds
Thai Migrant Workers Poach Wildlife for Food in Israel
Israel Animals Killed by Economic Development
Sheikh Abdul Aziz: A Green Sheikh Who Cares About Our Planet

The post Is Sport Hunting on its Way Out in Israel? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Conservationists in Jordan have criticized a news website for reporting positively on a video which shows two men posing with a dead owl they claim to have killed

Images have emerged of more animal rights abuse in the Middle East – this time in Jordan. A video was posted on a Jordanian news site showing two men boasting about the killing of an owl. Conservationists in the country were rightly quite upset about this, particularly as there have been concerns about the falling numbers of owls.

Sadly this is in a long list of animals rights abuses that Green Prophet has reported on from across the region. Over the years we have reported on a Kuwaiti posing with dead wolves, the massacre of 12 flamingoes as well as thousands of endangered fruit bats which were gunned down in Lebanon. Whats more, despite laws to ban the ownership of exotic animals in the Gulf, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more pet cheetahs being paraded around.

It’s honestly just astounding. Every week it seems as if some idiot has either posed in a picture or posted a video of themselves next to a tortured poor animal. I just don’t understand the logic of it all. Okay, you killed an owl. What does that even mean? Is that supposed to be an achievement? I mean, really it’s a harmless and defenceless bird which happens to have a dwindling population.

How can killing it be momentous enough to warrant a photo? Surely that can’t be a highlight in someone life. Will they be flicking through photos with their grandchildren saying “And this is when I got married. This is when you’re father was born and oh yes, this is when I killed a poor owl and contributed to its extinction”?

I know that in Jordan the owl represents bad luck but does that make its killing justified? Should we also be killing black cats? Reports did emerge that Gray wolves in Jordan were being hunted, poisoned and ran over as they are considered a huge threat but surely, it’s different for such a clearly harmless creature? Well, apparently not.

Head of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature’s field research, Ehab Eid, told the Jordan Times that hunting is a real threat to the owl population in Jordan. “People hunt owls because in our culture, owls are thought to bring bad luck and jinx those who see them,” Eid explained. However, owls have many benefits that people are not aware of, Eid said, such as limiting the spread of rodents that carry diseases.

For more on animal rights abuses in the Middle East see:

Kuwaiti Man Kills Wolf and Then Shows Off

Gulf Country Completely Bans Ownership of Wild Animals

Kuwaitis Use Shotgun to Kill 12 Flamingoes

Jordan’s Gray Wolves Are Hunted, Poisoned and Run Over

The post Jordan: Two Men Boast About Killing Owl appeared first on Green Prophet.

An Egyptian real estate developer is planning to build on 650 acres of protected land near Lake Qarun

Despite the huge potential for Eco-tourism in the Middle East, the reality is that most tourism development in the region are about one thing: making lots of money. Protecting the environment and preserving important natural habitats are so far down the list of concerns for developers, that having to destroy protected reserves in the name of luxury resorts doesn’t seem like a problem at all.

One example of this disregard for nature is the recent revelation that an Egyptian real estate developer, the Amer Group, has been granted permission to build on the northern part of Lake Qarun. According to Birdlife International, this is the first development of such huge proportions that has been allowed in an Egyptian protected area.

Lake Qarun, which is one and half hours drive from Cairo, is one of Egypt’s richest natural landmarks with historical importance. As well as being home to various wildlife including birds such as the black-necked grebe, flamingos, grey herons and even ducks, it holds one of the world’s most complete fossil records of terrestrial primates and marshland mammals. In fact, UNESCO is currently considering Lake Qarun as an important site of World Heritage.

However, this important stretch of land is currently being put at risk of degradation due to irresponsible tourism and projects such as the Amer Groups’ ‘Porto Fayoum’ plan. The Amer Group is behind other large tourism developments along Egypt’s North and Ain Sokhana coasts such as Porto Marina and Porto Sokhna.

According to Al-Masry Al-Youm, a wave of tourism is already destroying the shoreline of Lake Qarun and pollution is damaging animal and bird habitats. Whilst Lake Qarun is protected as a nature reserve, if permission is granted by the relevant authorities for development then it no longer falls under any protection.

Egypt’s former tourism minister Zuhair Garanah, who was sentenced to five years in prison this Tuesday, is believed to have given the ‘Porto Fayoum’ tourism development the go ahead.

And while local authorities near Lake Qarun are welcoming the development as a means to encourage jobs and stimulate the economy, analysts have raised concerns that the development may in fact be destroying the very habitats that tourists come to see.

Following the revolution in Egypt which overthrew president Hosni Mubarak who had ruled the country for thirty years, the tourism industry has argued that new projects are needed to attract tourists back into the country. However, this doesn’t have to entail destroying precious ecosystems in Egypt.

We recently covered one Egyptian businessman’s efforts to promote mountain climbing eco-tourism in the Sinai Peninsula, which is home to various Eco-orientated tourism enterprises. Many had also hoped that Egypt’s post-Revolution efforts to embrace wind-power had marked a shift towards more sustainable initiatives in the country. Let’s hope that as the permission for the resort was granted pre-revolution that it will be reconsidered and Egypt’s important nature reserves protected.

:: You can sign a petition to stop ‘Porto Fayoum’ here: Save Lake Qarun.

:: Birdlife International

::Image via Rick Manwaring/Flickr.

For More on Egypt and environmental issues see:

Hassan Fathy Fan Has High Hopes for Cairo

Post-Revolution Egypt Wants New Wind Farms

Climbing God’s Mountain for Eco Tourism in Egypt

Ethiopia Gives Revolutionary Egypt A Break Over Nile River

The post When Tourism and Nature Collide- Protected Land Under Threat in Egypt appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Iraqi Marshlands, which were pushed to the brink of extinction under the Saddam era, are slowly being restored to their former glory

For over 7,000 years the Iraqi Marshland- also known as the Mesopotamian Marshlands- played an important role in global ecosystems by supporting rare wildlife and rich biodiversity. Located in south Iraq, the marshlands stretched to over 6,000 square miles and are believed by many to be the location of the Garden of Eden. In the 1980’s, however, Saddam drained the marshland to punish the Marsh Arabs who rebelled against him and turned their green lush wetlands into dusty deserts.

Following the 2003 war in Iraq which had its own destructive impact on the environment, a unique opportunity emerged to restore the marshlands in what has since been dubbed as ‘the largest habitat restoration project in the world’.

At its peak the Iraqi Marshlands were considered to be the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East but after the devastating draining projects under Saddam, the Marshland shrunk to just 10 percent of its original size. The Marsh Arab population dropped from around quarter of a million to just a few thousand.

One Iraqi who had fled the country under Saddam returned to find that the wetlands he knew as a child had been destroyed beyond recognition. Azzam Alwash, decided to change this and set up Nature Iraq to help re-flood and so restore the marshlands.

Water which was diverted away from the Iraqi Marshlands under Saddam were re-routed to the marshlands which has seen the return of reeds on the embankments, bird-life and fishes. Birds such as the pied Kingfisher, the great white Pelican, the Basra Reed Warbler and the Greater Flamingo can now been seen flying across the marshlands.

The restoration has also encouraged the return of Marsh Arabs to the wetlands who are now able to eke out a living from the Marshlands through fishing and making baskets out of reeds to sell in the markets.

This is not to say that the project hasn’t faced any problems. Much of the restoration has been patchy and issues such as falling levels of water and the deteriorating quality of water have hindered a complete restoration. It also means that many Marsh Arabs are still struggling to get back to the living they had before the marshes were drained during the Saddam era.

Those involved in the restoration admit that there is still a long way to go but also point to the current progress as a sign that the Iraqi Marshlands could one day be fully restored to its former glory.

: Image via Nature Iraq

:: BBC Programme- Natural World: The Miracle in the Marshes of Iraq

For more on Iraq and its environmental concerns see:

A Profile of Iraq’s Environmental Woes

Iraqi Sheikh Threatens to Demonstrate If Kurds Don’t Share Water

US Leaves Iraq with a Legacy of Waste

The post Restoring Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’- The Mesopotamian Marshlands appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s easy to bandy about the term biodiversity, but much less easy to pin down its meaning. Harder still is to enumerate just how important biodiversity is to human life. The rate at which species are going extinct is 100-1000 times as high as normal. According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIEE), 33% of our genetic resources for food and agriculture have been lost, 40% of birds, 42% of amphibians, and roughly 70% of fisheries are stretching the sustainable threshold.

Fish is a staple source of animal protein for many of the world who do not have ready access to McDonalds. But we’ve nearly depleted the larger stock such as bluefish tuna and keep hauling out smaller and smaller species. At this rate, all that will be left to eat are jellyfish and algae, according to a recent IIED report called “Banking on Diversity.” The task of representatives gathered at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Japan, then, will be to create policies that will stay what some call the sixth mass extinction.

Biodiversity “stocks supermarkets,” “helps medicine keep pace with disease,” and “ensures nature replenishes the goods and services we rely on,” according to IIED, but we’re losing these natural services at a breakneck pace.

The BBC reports that a team of UN economists estimate that biodiversity’s loss amounts to US$2-5 trillion each year, and poorer nations that rely more directly on nature suffer most.

While northern countries depend on Wall Street and modern financial mechanisms for their daily bread, according to IIED, southern nations outside the cash economy and within the most concentrated spots of biodiversity such as rain forests, depend directly on species variety for sustenance and quality of life.

Whether or not any meaningful action will emerge in Japan is questionable, particularly since the last gathering of policy makers in Copenhagen culminated in a disappointing failure. The CBD was arranged to evaluate the missive established in 2002 to prevent biodiversity loss. Since then, little has changed, and almost everywhere, biodiversity loss has accelerated rather than lessened.

But change is not unattainable.

Although we have doubled our food and water consumption since the 1960s, Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) told the BBC, and even though the population has doubled, some important restoration programs are paying off.

“The forest area is growing in Europe and China, while deforestation is slowing in Brazil,” according to the BBC.

While the forces that jeopardize biodiversity are complex, it seems important to establish programs that prevent over-exploitation of natural resources by huge corporations, and present local communities with fair and realistic sustainability programs. Whether Nagoya will lead to such programs remains to be seen.

:: BBC

More on biodiversity in the Middle East:

An Unwelcome Colony? Ring-necked Parakeets Threaten Biodiversity in Jerusalem

Syngenta: Use GMOs To Boost Turkey’s Agricultural Sector

Worldwide Seed And Gene Banks Are “Libraries Of Life”

image via Neil Barman

The post Biodiversity Convention In Nagoya: Keeping The Jellyfish Out Of Our Sandwiches appeared first on Green Prophet.

Droves of migrating birds strike a remarkable sight as they swirl above head in flocks of some 5,000 birds at a time over the Judean Desert. There are about seven hundred million birds flying over Israel twice every year during migration season, 600,000 of them white storks, explains Noam Attias.

Attias, a birdwatcher for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, is perched atop a rocky hilltop overlooking the Jordan River Valley. She is also a former air force air traffic controller.

A pilot’s nightmare

“When you see a pack of storks, even if it is small, or very, very big you see this mass of birds which are going up. Pelicans will do it in a very nice order. Storks will do it in all kinds of directions as they go up. And when they get to the top of this thermal that’s when they begin to glide. That is when they are in a really nice order and I can count them really easily and I can count them 10, 20, 30, 40 and so on,” says Attias.

On the edge of the Judean Desert, looking down on the sleepy town of Jericho, everything appears quite tranquil. But these are dangerous skies for Israeli fighter jets. The bird watcher’s delight is a pilot’s nightmare. Since the mid-1970’s, migrating buzzards, storks, pelicans and eagles have done more damage to Israeli fighter jets than all the Arab air forces combined.

This is due to Israel’s unique geographical and political predicament. It’s a tiny country with little air space, where one of the world’s biggest air forces flies right through what happens to be the main corridor for storks, pelicans and other birds of prey migrating from Europe and Asia to Africa and back every spring and fall. This “bottleneck” has fighter jets competing with birds over this very confined area.

Bird spotters, like Attias, monitor the flocks and relay the information to the air force. A special unit collects this information from her and others, adding it to their radar images to map out the areas jets should avoid.

Flock of intelligence

Earlier in the day, Attias said she saw two F-16 fighter jets zooming by in the valley below her and immediately radioed to the air force that flocks were in the area. This was unusual since the air force has altered its training to avoid colliding with the birds.

“It is very hard for the pilot to see a bird coming. It’s a very small thing. The plane is flying really, really fast and as it comes into a bird the impact of the hit with the bird will be a lot of times bigger than it really is because of the velocity and it will crash,” Attias says. “It is one of the things that frighten our pilots the most. More than any other big enemy, this small thing, even a very small bird can be a disaster for our pilots.”

Incredibly, it wasn’t until the early 1980’s that the Israeli air force recognized that they could do something about reducing jet-bird hits. Lt.-Col. (ret.) Danny Grossman was the safety specialist put in charge of the endeavor in 1982.

“When I took over there were 100 to 120 bird strikes a year, including some incredible accidents and crashes,” Grossman tells The Media Line. “Until then, a bird strike was viewed as an act of nature which there was nothing to do about it except get to a synagogue and pray.”

Grossman says the air force approached the bird issue as if it were a tactical problem similar to getting around enemy surface-to-air missiles and developed a doctrine to avoid them.

Strikes fell out of the sky

“If an aircraft is going 500 knots, or 800 miles-per-hour, then you are talking about a force of several tons,” Grossman says.

“We started gathering intelligence. We gave the birdwatchers a motorized glider and they helped us map out the migration routes,” Grossman says. “We were shocked to find out that the birds flew the same air corridors, at specific altitudes and on very specific days every year.”

A plan was devised to alter training schedules to avoid the bird flocks. It took about two years to kick in and the results were dramatic.

“The number of collisions didn’t just drop. It fell out of the sky!” Grossman says.

The air force reported a 76 percent reduction in bird strikes, which is estimated to have saved over half a billion dollars between 1984 and 2001.

Today there are about 20 hits a year, a statistic that has held steady for the past 16 years. There are still cracked wings, destroyed engines and worse.  But it’s been over a dozen years since the last aircraft crashed due to a bird hit.

The air force realized that it could neither ignore nor compete with nature and each fall and spring it gives the enormous flocks plenty of room.

“Sometimes you find yourself standing for more than an hour and counting storks. They don’t stop coming. I’m jealous. I am jealous of their ability to fly, ability to glide,” Attias says.

:: The Media Line

Other birding stories:

Jordan Combines Conservation and Tourism To Combat Environmental Woes

Man Arrested Attempting To Smuggle “Golden” Falcon Eggs

Dubai Is For The Birds (And The People Who Love Them)

image via hhhalberto

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