Hezbollah bombardments take heavy toll on nature in northern Israel
Despite 70% drop in bird migration since beginning of war with Lebanese terror group, ornithologist says winged visitors likely to gradually return once hostilities end
Across northern Israel’s lush, green nature reserves, the ecological toll of the war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group is laid bare: wild boar hit by shrapnel, trees reduced to ashes, and swathes of charred vegetation.
In the Hula Valley, home to a unique migration sanctuary for birds, a flock of common cranes and their cacophony of calls fill the air — but smoke billows in the distance, and their sounds soon compete with the whir of Israeli military helicopters overhead.
The impact is particularly clear at the Hula Valley Nature Reserve, where all that remains in some areas after more than a year of Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon are burned plants and cinder-strewn soil.
Inbar Rubin, field director at the reserve, worries about the war’s effects on birds.
“The noises of war, the sounds of interceptions, of [rockets] falling and the loud booms — these are the sounds that birds hear,” Rubin said. “It’s a huge source of stress.”
The war has driven visitors away from the reserve, which sits approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
“People say to me, ‘Wow, the birds must be happier because there are no people,’ but the damage the war does to nature is a million times worse than the damage by visitors.”
The reserve is an internationally known resting spot for hundreds of millions of birds migrating from Europe and Asia to Africa and back during the spring and autumn seasons.
It is home to pelicans, ducks, eagles and other birds of prey, as well as flamingos, which Rubin said is “a fairly new phenomenon.”
But she noted that fewer birds were stopping at the sanctuary than in previous seasons, adding there was “much less nesting than in normal years,” and reduced mating.
Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there between Israel and fellow Iran-backed terror group Hamas.
Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns near the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, amid fears Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack, and increasing rocket fire by the terror group.
The attacks on northern Israel since October of last year have resulted in the deaths of 43 civilians. In addition, 69 Israel Defense Forces soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September. Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon. Hezbollah has named 516 members who have been killed by Israel amid the fighting, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began a new offensive against Hezbollah in September.
The Israeli bombing has devastated villages in Lebanon, especially areas along its southern border with Israel that are Hezbollah strongholds.
Paradise lost?
Around 50,000 cranes came to the reserve the previous winter, longtime ornithologist Yossi Leshem said. “And for them, it was really paradise.”
But after the Israel-Hezbollah war started, he added, the number of birds arriving dropped by 70 percent.
“It is a real threat,” said Leshem, also the founder of an international bird migration research center. The fighting and fires have also caused food resources for the birds to dwindle.
“Even if the war will stop in a year now — and I hope it will stop as soon as possible… the impact can be felt for many more years,” he told AFP.
In the long term, however, the conflict will not ultimately change the birds’ pattern of migration, Leshem said. The birds passing through will be “less successful and so on, but finally, when the war stops, [migration] goes on.”
The damage is not limited to the reserve.
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has assessed that since the Hamas onslaught, around 92,400 acres (37,400 hectares) of nature reserves, national parks, forests and open areas have been burned across the country.
“The damage to nature is of course extensive and in numbers we are not used to,” said Amit Dolev, an ecologist for the authority’s northern district.
The military has said nearly 16,000 projectiles, including exploding drones, have been fired into the country from Lebanese territory, many sparking wildfires.
Others, shot down by air defenses, have sent shrapnel plunging into open areas.
Nature’s resilience
At the nature reserve of Tel Dan, adjacent to the Lebanese border, around 17 acres (seven hectares) out of 400 have been devastated by fires ignited by rockets.
On the banks of the burbling Dan stream, beside the silhouette of a burnt-out blackthorn tree, Ramadan Issa, who manages the reserve, said he had spent the last year putting out fires and rescuing animals injured or distressed by the fighting.
He pointed to suffering wildlife including porcupines, snakes and wild boars injured or killed by missiles or shrapnel, as well as the destruction of ancient trees.
But on the charred earth where he stood, small green blades of grass and vegetation were already sprouting.
“Nature is strong,” Issa said. “It can grow back very fast and after the first [winter] rains, a lot will start to come back.”
