Middle East - Anthony Ham [90]
Plants
Middle Eastern flora tends to be at its lushest and most varied in the north, where the climate is less arid, although after millennia of woodcutting Turkey and Syria are now largely denuded. Only the Mediterranean coast west of Antalya and the Black Sea area and northeast Anatolia still have forests of considerable size.
In Lebanon, the Horsh Ehden Forest Nature Reserve is the last archetype of the ancient natural forests of Lebanon and is home to several species of rare orchids and other flowering plants. The cedars for which Lebanon is famous are now confined to a few mountain-top sites, most notably at the small grove at the Cedars ski resort (Click here) and the Chouf Cedar Reserve (Click here) in the Chouf Mountains. For more information about Lebanon’s cedars see the boxed text, Click here.
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NATIONAL PARKS & WILDLIFE RESERVES
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Forests cover 26% of Turkish territory, 8% of Lebanon, 6% of Israel and the Palestinian Territories and less than 1% in Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
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In a region where governments face a legion of serious social, political and security issues, it’s perhaps remarkable that there are any national parks at all. As it is, most of the region’s officially protected areas are national parks and wildlife reserves in name only. Optimists may call them admirable statements of intent. The cynics would probably prefer to describe them as attempts to create token projects as a means of showing goodwill without having to do much at all to protect the environment. The truth, which varies from country to country, lies somewhere in between. Yes, it’s a good thing that these parks and reserves exist, even if only because their resemblance to recreation areas encourages locals to actively experience and thus think more about their environment. But most parks are poorly patrolled and poorly funded, calling into question their long-term effectiveness.
Syria and, for understandable reasons, Iraq are bottom of the class when it comes to setting aside protected areas. Apart from a handful nature reserves that you may never realise you’ve passed through, Syria has one of the lowest ratios of protected areas to total land area of any country in the Mediterranean region.
Next comes Egypt, which has set aside 23 ‘protected areas’, although their status varies wildly and government funding is negligible. The Nile Islands Protected Area, which runs all the way from Cairo to Aswan, suffers from the fact that no one really knows, least of all the government, which islands are included, and most are inhabited and cultivated without restriction. At the other end of the scale, Ras Mohammed National Park (Click here) in the Red Sea is an impressive symbol of what can be done when the government puts its mind to it.
Nearly 25 years ago the Jordanian government established 12 protected areas, totalling about 1200 sq km, amounting, in total, to just 1% of Jordan’s territory. Some were abandoned, but the rest survive thanks to the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN; www.rscn.org.jo), Jordan’s major environmental agency. Its activities include saving animal, plant and bird species from extinction; conducting public-awareness programs among Jordanians, especially children; sponsoring environmental clubs throughout the country; training guides; promoting ecotourism; fighting against poaching and hunting; and lobbying against mining. The limited resources of the RSCN are used to maintain and develop six of Jordan’s reserves, including the impressive the Shaumari Wildlife Reserve (Click here) and Dana Nature Reserve (Click here).
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At the disappearing wetlands of Azraq Wetland Reserve (Click here) in Jordan, 347,000 birds were present on 2 February 1967. On the same date