Environment: Desert Rescue

Saving animals of the Bible

Foxes are always the first to arrive, lured by the scent of horse meat, beef and freshly killed chicken left at the edge of a desert road. Soon they are followed by other predators: wolves, jackals, hyenas and occasionally even a leopard. One after another, they partake of the roadside feast, while ignoring the nearby human observers. This remarkable nocturnal ritual is repeated once every two weeks at five locales in the bleak wastes of the Negev and Judean deserts, supervised by Israel's Nature Reserve Authority.

Under way since the early 1970s, the feeding program is the centerpiece of an Israeli effort to protect endangered desert species and repopulate the land of the Bible with the animals that inhabited it during ancient times. Thus even such creatures as jackals and wolves, which are anathema to farmers, enjoy the benefits of government largesse. Says Zoologist Giora Ilany, 40: "If these animals are not saved, this country would look like the face of the moon."

The age-old scarcity of water and foliage in the wasteland has always sharply limited its animal population. But the recent exploitation of the desert has added to the environmental pressures on wildlife. Israeli officials estimate that the hyena population, about 200 in the 1950s, had been reduced to less than 100 by 1970, largely because of encounters with speeding automobiles. Wolves faced a more subtle adversary; while raiding the garbage dumps of kibbutzim (collective farms), they often consumed fatal doses of pesticides. The otter population declined because of pollution of the desert's few rivers, while the Nubian ibex fell to Bedouin poachers.

The feeding stations cannot save all the desert's endangered species; only the more aggressive carnivores will use them. Officials must also avoid leaving too much food, lest the animals stop fending for themselves. Still, the program seems to be succeeding. Recent estimates by the authority show a healthy increase in the populations of all 13 species that use the stations.