Illustrated book seeks to enlist the very young in protecting biodiversity

In the run-up to the United Nations-backed International Day for Biological Diversity on Saturday, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority has published a special Red Book (in Hebrew) for children in which five Israeli animals explain how humans are impacting their lives.

There’s even a hopeful ending.

Commissioned by the authority, written by Shoham Smith and beautifully illustrated by Talia Drigues, the book, which takes its name from the grown ups’ Red List of threatened species collated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, features a salamander and his four friends, the loggerhead sea turtle, insect-eating bat, griffon vulture and mountain gazelle.

They show us where they live, tell us how they benefit nature and explain how urban development and other human-generated ills (from their point of view) have affected them.

For generations, salamander and his family have lived in seasonal pools during the winter and gone deep underground during the summer. That is until their pool disappeared under a new road.

Illustration from The Red Book, commissioned by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, written by Shoham Smith and illustrated by Talia Drigues. (INPA)

The gazelle’s mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, have always warned the youngsters to be careful of hunters, traps and predatory animals. Now, though, a new danger has been introduced — railroad tracks that slice through their pasture.

All the friends face threats of one kind or another, which is why they’ve made it into the Red Book and why all of them want to be taken out of it.

There’s even a plug for the bat, a creature deeply maligned as the source of COVID19. Insect eating bats eat mosquitoes and don’t do any harm, didn’t you know?

In the insect bat’s cave. Illustration from The Red Book, commissioned by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, written by Shoham Smith and illustrated by Talia Drigues. (INPA)

The story does not end with, “And they all lived happily ever after,” but it does conclude with hope, in the form of nature rangers, Shalom and Shalva, and the steps that the INPA is taking to help protect the five friends, their families and other animals.

And of course, it invites the young readers and those who are read-to, to roll up their little sleeves and help as well.

The Red Book packs a lot of information into a small space and little text, all of which is spoken by the animals.

At this stage, it is only available at INPA stores.