Mizrachi SA Jewish Observer - Pesach 2016 | Page 28

BIRDS OF ISRAEL

The second event is that the cranes’ habitat in Ethiopia has
come under immense pressure, where loss and degradation
of their
traditional breeding and feeding grounds through dam
construction, urbanisation and agricultural expansion has
taken place.

First, the Hula Valley was re-flooded.
As all good students of modern Israeli history know, the
Hula Valley was a mosquito-infested swamp, where the first
settlers succumbed to malaria with depressing regularity. In
the 1950’s, in a triumph of Zionist innovation, the swamps
were drained, the mosquitos died, and kibbutzim took their
place, growing crops like peanuts and corn. Everyone was
very proud of this achievement (the mosquitos, not so
much), but over time it became clear that the benefits were
limited. Water polluted by fertilisers poured onto the crops
began running into the Kinneret, while the soil, stripped of
its natural vegetation, was blown away by the strong winds
prevalent in the area. Underground fires also started up –
the peat of a drained swamp tends to spontaneously ignite.
In 1963, Israel’s Nature Preservation Authority was formed, and
a small pocket of the Hula declared as the country’s first nature
reserve. In the 90s, the Keren Kayemet L’Israel (KKL/JNF) initiated a government-led project and built hundreds of kilometres
of canals in order to keep the Hula land wet all year round. After
exceptional rains, parts of the Hula filled with water and the
decision was taken to leave a further area flooded once more
in an attempt to recreate part of the ancient ecosystem (just
without the mozzies, obviously.) And so the Hula Valley became
Israel’s most famous ecotourism area, with the creation of the
Agamon Hula Ornithology and Nature Park and the Hula Nature Reserve, run by KKL/JNF and the Israel Nature and Parks
Authority respectively. It attracts thousands of vis