The 8th International Desert Conference, the Drylands, Deserts and Desertification Conference (DDD) was held This week in Sde Boker. As part of the conference, KKL-JNF revealed a long-term plan for the Yatir forest, which is approaching its 60's birthday. During the next few years, various methods for renewing the forest in selected sits will be gradually tested, which will help in the gradual renewal of the old forest, which is an important heritage value in Israeli forestry and serves as a research site on afforestation in arid regions and climate change.
The Yatir Forest located on the outskirts of the desert is the largest planted forest in Israel, and an important part of the Israeli forestry heritage, alongside its importance and great contribution to global and local research on forestry issues in arid, semi-arid, desert and climate change areas.
At the conference held this week in the Negev, KKL - JNF unveiled a unique and long-term plan for forest management, which balances the need for the gradual renewal of the old coniferous forest, together with the preservation and strengthening of the variety of natural values found in the forest such as Antelopes, raptors nesting in the forest or woodpeckers, blooming carpets of wildflowers and rare plant species.
Unlike the coniferous forests in the Mediterranean regions of Israel, in the Yatir forest there isn’t a processes of natural regeneration of pine trees, on which the continuous existence of the forest can be based. Therefore, as part of a large-scale move to prepare forest and interface plans for all forests managed by KKL-JNF, and in light of the forest management challenges that climate change poses to us, a long-term forest and ecological interface plan for the Yatir forest was written in the last two years, in light of the principles of forest management theory, and from a holistic point of view that balances the many values and services In addition to defining updated management goals for the forest, the plan, and also dealt with interface issues such as assessing the health and physiological state of the forest and the lack of natural regeneration processes of the trees in it.
The program, professionally led by the ecology department in the forestry division and the forest department in the southern region, is part of a broad process of preparing forest and interface plans for all KKL-JNF forests in the last decade.
In addition, as part of the global fight against climate change and desertification processes, KKL-JNF operates in the international arena and transfers the knowledge and expertise that the organization has developed over the past decades, to countries and communities around the world. As a continuation of the "Tlamim Bamidbar" project in the Desert, experts from the organization guide and accompany the planning and construction of runoff harvesting and afforestation systems in dry areas in Kenya, when the challenges and progress of the work were presented at the conference.
Gilad Ostrovsky, KKL-JNF's chief forester: "A key element in preparing forest management for climate change is the preparation of forest plans and a long-term interface for forests. At the conference, a new forest and interface plan will be presented for the first time for the Yatir Forest, the largest of the planted forests in Israel and with a unique landscape-ecology on a local and international level. This is an important conference of professional meeting with scientists from around the world that will deal with global warming and climate change."