Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 107, November 2013, pp. 1-29. | Page 2

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The human population of Occupied Palestine in 2013 is estimated at 11,439,000 in an area of 27,000 square kilometer, or 424 people per square kilometer. The northern and central part of the country has a much higher human density than Al-Naqab (Negev) Desert (the southern arid part) and the Rift Valley (Jordan Valley, Dead Sea depression and Wadi Araba), where most of the contemporary wolf population lives. Already in the 1930s, wolves had disappeared from the densely settled areas - the coastal plain between Haifa and Jaffa and the mountains between Nablus and Hebron (Al Khalil) (Khalaf-von Jaffa, 1990).

A sleeping Arabian Wolf (Canis lupus arabs) at the Arabia’s Wildlife Centre, Desert Park, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. 16.08.2008. Photo by: Prof. Dr. Norman Ali Bassam Khalaf-von Jaffa. Palestinian wolves are animals of open areas. They have never inhabited the dense Mediterranean scrub forest that covers about 400 square kilometer in Galilee (Jaleel) and on Mount Carmel. According to Shahi (1977, 1983), the Indian Canis lupus pallipes Sykes 1831, apparently also do not live in dense forest cover. Because of Palestine's small size, its nature reserves are also small and, thus, are of little use to such wide-ranging animals as wolves. The largest nature reserve in the north, that of Mount Meron (Jabal Al Jarmaq), has an area of about 90 square kilometer, which is largely covered by scrub forest and therefore not suitable for wolves (Khalaf-von Jaffa 1990). Several subspecies of wolves occur in the Middle East. The smallest of all the wolf subspecies, the Arabian Canis lupus arabs Pocock, 1934, is found in a large
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 107 – November 2013