Legal Protection of Biodiversity
By Sami Backleh
This week in Palestine

It is a known fact that Palestine contains a great wealth of biodiversity resources in terms of the number of species, ecosystems, and landscapes.

Although considered small in terms of landmass, Palestine displays a wide variation in elevations and geology, leading to a broad range of habitats, which is reflected in a high diversity of plants and animals.

This diversity is needed for humanity to survive. People all over the world depend on plants and animals for food, medicine, and raw materials to manufacture clothing and building materials. Species and ecosystems regulate our climate, clean our freshwater, regulate and clean atmospheric gases, treat our waste, generate and clean our soil, recycle nutrients, and pollinate our crops. In other words, at no cost to us, biodiversity supports the human being.

When there is less diversity in nature, ecosystems become less productive.

Species and biological communities have difficulty adapting to change, but humans suffer too. Economic opportunities and the quality of life of future generations are put at risk.

Yet it has been asserted that virtually all the earth’s ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through human actions, and ecosystems continue to be converted for agricultural and other uses. It has been said that the current loss of biodiversity and the related changes in the environment are now occurring faster than ever before in human history and there is no sign of this process slowing down. Many animal and plant populations have declined in numbers and geographical spread. Species extinction is a natural part of the earth’s history. Yet scientists have revealed that human activity has increased the extinction rate by at least 100 times compared to the natural rate.

The Dead Sea Sparrow (Passer moabiticus), as its name suggests, is a breeding bird around the River Jordan, Dead Sea, and into Iraq, Iran and western Afghanistan. Breeding recorded in Cyprus (1981/1982) but is probably extinct there now Cyprus. It is migratory or dispersive, although the regular wintering grounds of this nomadic species are largely unknown, except that the eastern race winters in Pakistan. Flocks of the nominate western race have been found in winter further south in the Middle East.

from Octobor 2006 until now Palestine Wildlife Society has developed its scheme for bird ringing (banding) in palestine . So the ringed birds has been increased in number in the spring 2007, and all the birds has been caught in Jericho Station for monitoring the wildlife by the ringers: Baha' ishaq and Talal Bni Odeh.