In honor of Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Festival for Trees, an orchard is going to be planted in Kibbutz Tze’elim, right next to the home of Yarden Bibas’ parents, Arutz Sheva reported. A yellow sign at the site bears the heartfelt message: “Our home is not complete without you,” in reference to his wife, Shiri, and their children, Ariel and Kfir, who remain in Hamas captivity, with no sign of life having been given in recent times. Additionally, another orchard is going to be planted in Kibbutz Nir Oz in honor of the victims who lost their lives on October 7. These orchards will both serve as living memorials for the victims, some of whom have been denied proper graves for their loved ones.
The planting of these orchards on Tu B’Shvat comes at a critical time for Israel. Since October 7, 2023, approximately 230,000 dunams – that’s about 57,000 acres – of green land have been devastated in the north alone, including 25,000 dunams managed by the Jewish National Fund. The Jewish National Fund has made a major effort to build forests across the Jewish state, having planted over 240 million trees and developed over 400,000 acres of land throughout Israel’s history.
In the wake of Hezbollah rockets and mortars destroying a vast number of natural areas in Israel’s north, the Israeli government has approved an unprecedented 15 billion shekel plan for the rehabilitation and development of northern Israel, hoping to rehabilitate the green areas that Hezbollah wantonly destroyed. JNF experts estimate it could take between 5 to 7 years to restore these forests, with some areas requiring up to 40 years for full recovery.
“We literally witnessed their life’s work go up in smoke,” Eli Hafuta, director of the Upper Galilee and Golan Region at the JNF, told JTA. “It’s a devastating sight to watch trees that have stood for 70 or 80 years go up in flames. Even younger trees, ones my team and I planted just a decade ago, can be reduced to ashes in just 15 minutes.”
Gilad Ostrovsky, JNF’s chief forester and head of the forestry division, told the Jerusalem Post: “A forest is not just a collection of trees. It plays a crucial role in soil preservation, mitigating floods, improving air quality, and providing local cooling. We also see forests as a refuge for people, especially in times of crisis. They are spaces that bring peace to the soul and are an integral part of our national resilience.”
Forest restoration has its own timetable, Ostrovsky concludes. “It’s a process that takes a decade or even longer,” he explains. “The Carmel Forest, which burned 14 years ago, is still far from how it looked in the past. Restoring a forest after such damage is a task for the next generation, but we know the land will recover—and it will do it best when we work together with nature.”
Perhaps the ecological damage of the recent war can be best felt in the Hula Valley. The Hula Valley is famous for being a prime destination for bird migrations, with the BBC naming it one of the top ten bird-watching sites in the world. However, a place that tourists used to flock to in order to see rare birds during the war was empty of tourists, witnessed a 70% drop in the number of birds who rested there en route to Africa, which naturalists blame on the rocket fire from Lebanon, and was instantly transformed into an animal hospital for birds and other species that were wounded by Hezbollah rockets, requiring rehabilitation before being returned into the wild.
“We’re the first rehabilitation center in the world with a war protocol,” Dr. Rona Nadler-Valency, the center’s head veterinarian and director, told JTA. “We would be in the middle of surgery, an animal on the operating table, when the sirens would go off. We’d have to leave everything and run to the shelter — sometimes dozens of times a day.”
At other times, Nadler-Valency and her team were caught outdoors when sirens sounded, forcing them to drop to the ground for cover. “Those moments felt like pure insanity, but at least we were able to keep doing our work,” she said. JTA reported on one heart-breaking case of a tawny owl named Lilit who was wounded in the war, suffering a severe head injury that left her blind and deaf.
According to the report, Lilit was carefully monitored and rehabilitated in a specialized acclimation cage. They noted that treatment was complicated by the ongoing missile fire, requiring the team to carefully time their visits to her, but eventually the team managed to restore her sight, hearing and flight. After a month and a half in the cage, JTA reported that Lilit was released back into the wild with a transmitter on her back, allowing the team to track her recovery and ensure she could hunt and survive, as well as gain insights into how owls adjust to life after similar injuries. “Cases like Lilit’s,” Nadler-Valency reflected, “were rays of light amid the madness.”
Yaron Charka, chief ornithologist at the JNF, told the JTA that the war has adversely affected crane migrations into the Hula Valley: “During wartime, birds can change their route and bypass us in isolated instances — we saw this with Ukraine. In the past two years, the arrival of the crane flocks in the fall to the Hula Valley has been significantly delayed. It is important that we continue to monitor this trend.”
