Interior Ministry plan will protect urban natural areas
Haaretz, December 21, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat
In the coming days, the large field south of the Glilot intersection will become covered in a thick blanket of daffodils. It is a small piece of nature that has survived in the heart of an urban area, and contains many additional species of plants, as well as wild animals such as hares, which have become rare in other areas due to large-scale hunting. Thanks to two environmental activists, at least a part of the field may gain protected status in the future.
The Interior Ministry Tel Aviv District's Planning Office announced several weeks ago that it intends to prepare a comprehensive plan for urban natural areas that will be integrated into the district master plan. This is the first initiative of its kind and scope in Israel, and is being advanced by Interior Ministry and Environmental Protection Ministry planners Nili Yugev and Naomi Angel.
The comprehensive plan might very well not have come about had it not been for the efforts of Green Party member Dror Ezra and Ramat Hasharon environmental activist Amit Mendelson. The two repeatedly told various planning committees that the new Tel Aviv District master plan does not protect urban natural areas. Some of the sites were designated for construction and others were absorbed by parks, where grass and trails are preferred to natural fields, winter pools and sand dunes. In recent years Mendelson independently mapped all urban natural areas in the Tel Aviv District, telling the district committee, among other things, that the district is home to 11 rare species of wild plants. He also relied on environmental experts such as Tel Aviv University Professor Avital Gazit, who wrote an opinion paper calling for the preservation of a winter pool that is in an area that is designated to become a park in Herzliya. Gazit said the unique variety of life in the pool is in danger of becoming extinct.
"The pool's value will only increase in the future due to the diminishing number of similar habitats in Israel," wrote Gazit. If it is not adequately preserved, said Gazit, "some of the natural elements ... such as water fowl, will disappear." Plant researcher Dr. Uzi Golan also has discovered several rare wild plant species in the pool.
The Interior Ministry's planning office in Tel Aviv decided to formulate the comprehensive plan for urban nature due to Mendelson and Ezra's petition against the the district master plan. The comprehensive plan published by Yugev and Angel calls for a thorough identification of natural sites, views, and heritage, which will include mapping of habitats and rare and unique species that characterized the region and thus should be protected. Specific instructions for preserving urban natural areas will be formulated on the basis of the maps.
Mendelson and Ezra have already noted several sites in the Tel Aviv District that potentially could be designated as urban natural areas, including the Herzliya and Glilot sites, as well as the natural sands in Holon and a sycamore grove north of Zahala.
The new Tel Aviv District comprehensive plan follows in the footsteps of the Jerusalem Municipality, which has already recognized urban natural areas in its master plan. The Jerusalem plan, which is currently being approved, recognizes five urban natural areas in the capital and gives explicit instructions on how to preserve them.
Large cities throughout the world have already recognized the importance of preserving urban natural areas. There are over 100 such sites in London, for example, and urban natural areas have been designated in New York and Barcelona as well.
