Mandel foundation to donate $20m for innovative Beersheba wildlife center

US Jewish philanthropist Morton Mandel’s foundation will donate $20 million for the construction of an innovative wildlife center in Beersheba, the city’s Mayor Ruvik Danilovich announces.

The center, to open in 2021, will serve as an educational center for animal-human interaction and enable visitors to learn of animal relationships and their place in ecological systems.

Danilovich says the donation is the largest in Beerhseba’s history and will go towards the establishment of “an international initiative that will serve as a global breakthrough in how humans relate to animals.

The center will reportedly incorporate animals of endangered species or ones that for various reasons cannot be released into the wild. The animals will not be in cages but rather in an open “savanna-like” enclosure, according to the municipality.