In Your Bucket Because….<\/strong><\/p>\n “Woo-hoo,” you might have said, looking down upon the all-you-can-eat buffet that covered the land after the swamps were drained and the Jordan River re-channeled and the farmland planted. (Or perhaps, “Squawk, squawk;” remember: you are a hungry, tired bird — a gray crane, or maybe a stork — who has flown a few thousand miles.)<\/p>\n So imagine: You invite your wife and your kids to check it out with you, and the neighbors take note, and pretty soon, what with birds being flock animals and all, a bugle of cranes and a mustering of storks and a paddling of ducks and a siege of herons have all made camp. Some 500,000,000 (yes, five hundred million<\/em>) birds representing more than 400 species pass through this sliver of land on their annual migrations.<\/p>\n If you are a bird, this works out quite well. If you are a farmer, not so much. 500,000,000 birds can eat an awful lot of crops, and why would any bird leave this lovely spot and fly another few thousand miles when the temperature is balmy and there is plenty of food and fresh water?<\/p>\n The words “Biblical plague” come to mind.<\/p>\n Too many birds feasting was only one of the problems caused by the transformation of swamp to farmland. In that “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” way, a series of environmental imbalances unfolded, including peat sediment degradation, uncontrollable underground fires, infestations of field mice, and the release of nitrates and sulfates. What had been one of the Middle East’s biologically richest aquatic environments lost 119 animal species; some plants became extinct. A small parcel — swampland that had originally been set aside to counter environmental concerns — \u00a0became, in 1963, Israel\u2019s first nature reserve, but it wasn’t enough. Finally, from 1980 to 1994, the JNF inaugurated a program to reverse the damage of the original reclamation project and rehabilitate the Hula. Work began, and in 1994, part of the southern Hula Valley was reflooded to create Agamon HaHula — “Little Hula Lake,” which now serves as a protected nesting and resting site.<\/p>\n But there was still the problem of birds and the farmers, because with so much food and fresh water available right in the middle of a migration, the area was inundated with millions of birds who feasted on peanut crops and saw no reason to leave.<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.buckettripper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Birdwatching-Israel.jpg\" "\\"Birdwatching")
<\/a>Reclaiming a Reclamation Project: Environmental History in the Hula Valley <\/strong><\/h3>\n