SPNI on Arava hothouses: Farming will endanger rare animals - Haaretz

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Thu., January 17, 2008 Shvat 10, 5768

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SPNI on Arava hothouses: Farming will endanger rare animals

By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: environmentalism, SPNI

Fifteen years after one of Israel's most important environmental battles, the proposed construction of the Voice of America radio station in the northern Arava, the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI) again claims that the region is in serious environmental danger.

The new threat is a plan to build a large number of hothouses in the northern Arava, and the SPNI has started to fight it.

The Tamar Regional Council recently received in-principle approval from the Agriculture Ministry to increase the number of agricultural plots in the communities of Ein Tamar and Ne'ot Hakikar, south of the Dead Sea. The new plots are where the Voice of America high-power transmitters were planned.

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The fight over the radio station began in the late 1980s, when the Israel agreed to the U.S. request to build the station, to be able to broadcast to what was then the Soviet Union. The plan was canceled in 1993 after a battle by environmentalists, which included an appeal to then vice president Al Gore.

Environmentalists see the fight as one intended to maintain one of Israel's last remaining natural large areas with continuous open space.

Two weeks ago Gershon Peleg, the SPNI's executive director, asked Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon to cancel the land allocation. At the same time a large number of scientists signed a petition in favor of keeping the area in its natural state.

Peleg asked for a reevaluation of the needs of agriculture and nature preservation in the region, as the ministry decision was made without public input or consideration of the damage to be caused by the plan.

Simhon said he will meet with the SPNI soon on the matter.

Construction of the hothouses would require leveling of the terrain and uprooting of all the natural vegetation. "This is the last land in the Arava available to establish a nature reserve of a significant size that will protect the unique scenery of the area," explained Prof. Amotz Zahavi of Tel University, who has been conducting research on birds in the area for decades.

According to the petition, the new agricultural land will bring with it "poisons, hunting of wild animals by foreign workers, agricultural waste and increased foreign species. Even now there is a drastic drop in the number of animals in the area and even extinction of a number of local species, such as the sand fox and the sand cat."

One of the animals unique to the region is a species of spiny-tailed lizard which digs huge tunnels that are spread all over the land designated for farming.

"We have been working for four years to get this land, and now the SPNI suddenly woke up," responded the head of the Tamar Regional Council, Dov Litvinof. "Most of the territory of the council is intended for nature reserves or is within the franchise of the Dead Sea Works. We have only two agricultural areas left, and one of them is in the Tze'elim stream. We gave it up despite having all the [necessary] approvals. We did not want to cause environmental damage in the area north of Masada," explained Litvinof. He said without this land, there was no possibility of expanding the communities of the region, and they would be in danger of economic collapse. "The SPNI says that the Northern Arava is the region of the spiny-tailed lizard, but what about the spiny humans, do they not have a right to live?" said Litvinof.

The Agriculture Ministry responded: "Enlarging the standards for plots is intended to strengthen the agricultural operations of these communities, based on a master plan and with a long-term outlook. The decision to allocate the lands takes into account broad considerations, including ecological ones and the livelihoods of the residents."

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