Middle East - Anthony Ham [89]
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Birdlife International (www.birdlife.org) is a global alliance of conservation organisations with a fantastic database of birds and the best places in the Middle East to view them.
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Israel claims to be the world’s second-largest fly way (after South America) for migratory birds and the Society for the Protection of the Nature of Israel (SPNI; Map ; in Israel 03-566 0960; www.teva-tlv.org/eng_home.html) has an excellent map and guide, the Bird Trails of Israel, detailing 14 bird-watching centres.
Other organisations worth contacting include the following:
International Birding & Research Centre (www.birdsofeilat.com)
International Birdwatching Center of the Jordan Valley ( in Israel 04-6068396; www.birdwatching.org.il)
International Center for the Study of Bird Migration (www.birds.org.il)
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Al-Fayoum Oasis, and Wadi Araba in Jordan also receive an enormous and varied amount of ornithological traffic. Egypt alone has recorded sightings of over 430 different species.
MARINE LIFE
The Red Sea teems with more than 1000 species of marine life, and is an amazing spectacle of colour and form. Fish, sharks, turtles, stingrays, dolphins, corals, sponges, sea cucumbers and molluscs all thrive in these waters.
Coral is what makes a reef a reef – though thought for centuries to be some form of flowering plant, it is in fact an animal. Both hard and soft corals exist, their common denominator being that they are made up of polyps, which are tiny cylinders ringed by waving tentacles that sting their prey and draw it into their stomach. During the day corals retract into their tube, displaying their real colours only at night. Most of the bewildering variety of fish species in the Red Sea – including many that are found nowhere else – are closely associated with the coral reef, and live and breed in the reefs or nearby sea-grass beds.
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Three of a small group of the critically endangered northern bald ibis have been tagged in Syria. Satellites so far have tracked Sultan, Salam and Zenobia on a 3100km journey to Ethiopia.
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It’s well known that the world’s coral reefs and other marine life are under threat from the effects of global warming, but there are plenty of local causes that threaten a more imminent death. This is especially the case in the Red Sea waters off Hurghada where, conservationists estimate, more than 1000 pleasure boats and almost as many fishing boats ply the waters. Fifteen years ago, there was nothing to stop captains from anchoring to the coral, or snorkellers and divers breaking off a colourful chunk to take home. However, due largely to the efforts of the Hurghada Environmental Protection & Conservation Association (Hepca; www.hepca.com) and the Egyptian National Parks Office in Hurghada, the Red Sea’s reefs are at last being protected. Set up in 1992 by 15 of the town’s more reputable dive companies, Hepca’s program to conserve the Red Sea’s reefs includes public-awareness campaigns, direct community action and lobbying of the Egyptian government to introduce appropriate laws. Thanks to these efforts, the whole coast south of Suez Governorate is now known as the Red Sea Protectorate. Over 570 mooring buoys have been set up at popular dive sites around Hurghada and marine rangers from the Egyptian National Parks Office police the waters. A symbolic ‘reef conservation tax’ has also been introduced.
Although less celebrated, the marine environment of the Mediterranean also faces considerable challenges. As late as the mid-1990s Lebanon still did not have a single functioning wastewater treatment plant, and raw sewage was pouring into the sea. A number of treatment plants have since been rehabilitated and new ones built, but offshore water quality remains a concern. In 2006, during the Israel-Hezbollah war, things