Huge expanses of nature in the Galilee and Golan have been set ablaze during the war, among them, some of Israel’s most popular and once idyllic sites. A journey into a charred stretch of land in a vehicle built just for this purpose
Moshe Gilad. Sep 3, 2024
The radio in the Bazelet fire engine, which recently entered service, clatters incessantly. On it, you hear reports from across the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee. Although the day we chose for our recent patrol was a rather quiet morning, there were nonetheless radio reports about several fires. At some point, it was difficult to know whether our patrol to the burned areas along Nahal Meshushim (the Meshushim Stream) would continue as planned.
Hanoch Tal, the Yehudiya Forest supervisor at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, listening to the radio and suddenly hit the brakes of the fire truck. He pointed left, where five gazelles were skipping with unbelievable lightness, as if floating above the burnt area and disappearing among the trees. Tal and I waited in the cabin of the truck and, surrounded by scenes of soot, smiled widely. Photographer Gil Eliyahu feverishly replaced the lens, bemoaning having missed the unexpected dreamlike moment.
The radio in the Bazelet fire engine, which recently entered service, clatters incessantly. On it, you hear reports from across the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee. Although the day we chose for our recent patrol was a rather quiet morning, there were nonetheless radio reports about several fires. At some point, it was difficult to know whether our patrol to the burned areas along Nahal Meshushim (the Meshushim Stream) would continue as planned.
Hanoch Tal, the Yehudiya Forest supervisor at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, listening to the radio and suddenly hit the brakes of the fire truck. He pointed left, where five gazelles were skipping with unbelievable lightness, as if floating above the burnt area and disappearing among the trees. Tal and I waited in the cabin of the truck and, surrounded by scenes of soot, smiled widely. Photographer Gil Eliyahu feverishly replaced the lens, bemoaning having missed the unexpected dreamlike moment.
These are difficult and confusing times in the north. Missiles and drones launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon have been raining down on Israel’s north since October 8. A series of very frightening moments (missiles and drones, wounded people, huge fires) alongside small sublime moments in nature, like the bounding gazelles.
Everything is crammed into a single confusing and misleading package. Everything is black and white. Tal, from Natur, a community in the southern Golan Heights, is a smiling, experienced, very calm man who rolls his own cigarettes every time we stop. At the first stop, he made it clear that he was familiar with the joke of the fireman who smokes and that there was no point in retelling it.
A few hours later, we travelled in a Bazelet, a specially built vehicle adapted for operating in the Golan’s nature reserves and open areas. We traveled north on a dirt road marked in red parallel to Road 888 from Had Nes to Bustan Dan west of Katzrin. We followed the west bank of Nahal Meshushim and stopped often to look at the view. The scenes we saw are no longer rare in the Golan and Upper Galilee.
Large areas, some of them nature reserves and some not, are scorched. Big blackened spaces with a lot of green islands in them. We tried to understand the rules. Why were some areas totally burnt while others remained almost completely green? In many places, especially near streams, we are already seeing recovery, green shoots of new vegetation, which cheer us up. Elsewhere, especially in places where large trees burned, the scene is hard to view.
We stopped for a while at the confluence of Nahal Meshushim and Wadi Dvura. The entire area is crisscrossed with flowing streams. The Ein Znobar Nature Reserve is there and the Yehudiya Nature Reserve lies to the north, where there are many springs that used to attract hikers. The area is black. The sound of trickling water is wonderful. In many places, the smell of something burning lingers in the air.
Nature and Parks Authority data tell the story well, but looking at the land reveals other things. The country suddenly looks naked, black, exposed, without the cover of grass, thorns, or vegetation. The contours are clearer. Animals, especially gazelles, cannot hide. We saw dozens during the day. The heart expands with joy at every encounter.
Bright red mosaic
The fires on the Golan and in the Galilee are a major event. In 2022, 25,000 dunams (6,250 acres) burned on the Golan and 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) burned in the Galilee during the year. In just over six months in 2024, 110,000 dunams (27,500 acres) on the Golan and 50,000 dunams (12,500 acres) burned. Half of the burned area is in nature reserves and half is in open spaces. Nationwide, 113,000 dunams (28,250 acres) burned in 2022. In the first seven months of 2024, 280,000 (70,000 acres) burned. The map of the burned areas, symbolized by the color red, on the Golan and in the Galilee shows a horrifying picture. A bright red mosaic.
Standing on the banks of Nahal Meshushim, Ami Dorfman, the Nature and Parks Authority’s northern district director, explains: “This is a completely different year than any we knew in the past. It’s different in scale, in intensity, in the effort required of us. There is no day without a fire now. There are fires that last for several days and if you put one out by evening, in the morning you find that the wind has rekindled everything.
“Nature and Parks Authority employees, volunteers, visitors, and local residents are fighting for every meter of the nature reserves. There were cases in which we said, ‘We’ll sacrifice some area and fight later,’ and the guys wouldn’t hear of it. It’s exhausting Sisyphean work on the ground. You walk long distances, carrying bellows and a fire extinguisher, climbing into and out of dry river beds.
“Look around, look at the difficult ground, the cliffs. Over there is a minefield, which you cannot approach. There are cases where it’s forbidden for firefighting planes to enter out of fear they’ll be damaged. Nonetheless, our greatest pride now is that we’ve succeeded in protecting most of large nature reserves and most of the most sensitive and valuable reserves. Places like Hurshat Tal, the Banias waterfall and bridge were saved thanks to hard and precision work.
“It’s very important to make it clear that we’re not alone,” says Dorfman. “Besides the dozens of Nature and Parks Authority employees, with us are cowboys, community security squads, nature lovers and farmers who come to help. There is cooperation with the Jewish National Fund, the Fire and Rescue Service and the army. There is a broad community of people in the north for whom saving nature is important and they participate. People here are emotionally involved. There are people who rush forward every day to fight fires. It’s exhausting, but our spirit is strong.”
“You have to realize that ordinarily there is one mega-fire a year,” adds Tal. “Now we have six mega-fire events at the same time. Dividing our attention was challenging, but a lot of people came to help to put out the fires. There were people here who had never held a firehose, but they helped and ran back and forth to bring equipment, food and water.”
What are your priorities?
“We don’t run to every fire,” says Dorfman. “First, we get permission from the army to enter. Then we assess that is the most important and most sensitive, what is the most threatened. There are places where we say what will burn over here is shrub-steppe, which will regrow next year, so that’s not too terrible. On the other hand, it is critical to save an area with centuries-old trees, which will take hundreds of years to grow back.
“Next, we consider how to deploy the force. We can’t reach every fire. We sometimes sacrifice land that we know is less sensitive in favor of a more sensitive area. There are places that are difficult to enter because of the hazardous terrain, cliffs, proximity to the fence, or minefields.
“The Fire and Rescue Service has their priorities, and I have no argument with them, because they’re working very hard to protect communities. Obviously, it’s more important to them to protect Katzrin [the largest town in the Golan], whereas we focus on a remote river channel, and that division is fine.”
What to save first?
“There are moments when you stand in despair and ask yourself: What is more valuable? Where to race off to first?” says Tal. On a recent Saturday night, he says, “there were two big fires: at the waterfalls route and in Nahal Hiva’i area next to Yehudiya. It was clear to us that the Fire and Rescue Service would not go there.
“That fire touched a nature reserve and we realized that if we didn’t handle it, it would threaten the Gamla Nature Reserve, which we considered a critical site. We therefore concentrated our effort there, against a more remote fire. We told the Fire and Rescue Service not to waste resources on us and to focus on the waterfalls route. We focused on Nahal Hiva’i.”
“There was a huge fire in the Yehudiya area, which threatened Ani’am [a moshav in the Golan],” continues Tal. “At some point, we realized that we were working on the tail of the fire and that we weren’t positioned in the right direction. It was running too far forward for us. We pulled everyone out. We said: come rest, drink water and go to the next firebreak. It was clear to us that we had to act differently against this mega-fire.
“We try to calculate the speed at which the fire is spreading in order to plan the firebreaks,” he says, referring to natural gaps in vegetation or other barriers that slow the spread of the fire. “The wind regime is variable. The fire speed varies. It is slow descending the slope and very quick climbing the cliff. If the teams get trapped below in the channel, it could be very dangerous, so we invest a lot of thought in where and when to enter. Once we used to just run in, but now the situation is different. We get meteorological updates every 30 minutes, which help to correctly plan a firefighting strategy.”
What kind of fires are you dealing with?
“Most fires are grass fires,” says Dorfman. “This is a very fast fire, which catches a lot of animals that didn’t have time to flee. These are mostly reptiles, but such fires also endanger larger animals. Another kind of fire is a fire of riverbank vegetation fire such as reeds and raspberries, which are very flammable. In other places, we also have mixed forest fires. These fires have several layers (trees, bushes, grass), especially pines, which burn fast and make it more complicated to extinguish the fire. Every year, fires are caused by the army, hikers’ negligence and arson. Of course, this year is different, and the fires are caused by rockets, drones and interceptors that fall to the ground.”
How many well–known nature reserves been damaged?
“The main effort is to protect Hurshat Tal and the Banias Nature Reserve about five kilometers [three miles] to the east. These are very popular sites of symbolic importance and high value. Hurshat Tal has Tabor oaks that are 400 years old and even older. These are irreplaceable assets. At these sites, our teams practically ‘committed suicide’ to stop the fire. We invested an immense effort to protect the forest. At no point did we decide to sacrifice Banias, but our priority was working hard to prevent the fire from reaching Hurshat Tal. We succeeded in saving the herd of fallow deer that lives there and we prevented the fire from spreading to the ancient oaks in the national park.
“There was a huge fire here, at Nahal Meshushim, which ‘ran’ along the channel of the ravine. We were able to use heavy equipment and build a path all the way to the bottom. That’s how we stopped the fire. It’s not a very hiked nature reserve, but it has a beautiful path.”
Do you have new insights?
“We’re investing money and effort in building firebreaks and paths,” says Dorfman. “We’re not thrilled about this because it damages the landscape, but these [methods] have proven themselves. Our professionals, beginning with Natan Elbaz, the forestry department director [of the parks authority], are proving that the firefighting doctrine that we developed is correct. Bazelet is the best example of this. This firetruck gives us an edge. We were able to stop the big fire at Banias thanks to Bazelet. I wish we had two or three more like it.”
Bazelet is a tall, green Mercedes truck, which was purchased second-hand and adapted specifically for fighting fires on the Golan. Attached to it is a firefighting apparatus suitable for putting out fires in open areas and in river channels. It has high navigability and carries a 2.2-cubic-meter water tank and sophisticated hoses, which can be operated from inside the cabin. Part of its adaptation is to spray water on the firetruck’s immediate surroundings to protect the firefighters. Bazelet is a new asset, which entered service on the Golan just three months ago and had its baptism of fire in the great fire that raged in the Yehudiya Nature Reserve. Fire and Rescue personnel call it “the F-35 of firefighting.”
What’s the next stage for you?
“We’re already racking our brains for the right rehabilitation,” says Dorfman. “In which areas should burned trees be removed. How to restore burned areas for the public. How to quickly restore the option of hiking in these places. We understand the public’s need to hike in open spaces. Nature heals. It has a quality that is important to many people and must be restored to its previous condition. We have places like the Black Canyon [in the middle of Nahal Zavitan], which we’ve closed for a long time, and there are places where we’re working to reopen the trails as quickly as possible.”
Saving the vultures
From Nahal Meshushim we drove to the Gamla Nature Reserve, a short distance eastward. A month ago, as part of the effort to fight the fire in the reserve, which had begun descending on the Nahal Daliyot slopes, Nature and Parks Authority staff decided to evacuate griffon vultures from their acclimatization cages and feeding stations where they were held.
The staff feared that the fire might spread to the other bank and injure the birds. The vultures were evacuated with great effort from the cages and transferred to other acclimatization cages at Kahal and Nahal Amud in the Lower Galilee. The evacuees included two pairs of griffon vultures from the reproduction core, one born in captivity in 2022, who was in an acclimatization cage ahead of its release, and an elderly handicapped vulture, who attracts eagles and Egyptian vultures to the feeding station.
Kazrin resident Elika Maatof is responsible for the vultures’ care at Gamla, worriedly told us that the birds had already been evacuated twice from Gamla to other, safer sites and returned to the Golan. “We drove them crazy. It takes time for them to recover. A vulture is a wild animal and the transfer isn’t optimal for it. We now have 10 vultures whom we guard and do the maximum to protect. The fires and smoke are liable to injure them.” The conversation stopped at that point. Maatof pointed like a proud father to four Griffon vultures flying overhead.
Another major problem worrying the nature wardens on the Golan is the future of the Egyptian vultures, a globally endangered species. Egyptian vultures nest in many of the wadis in the north, and there are three nests on the cliffs in the Gamla Nature Reserve. It is not yet known what happened to the nests and the chicks.
In addition to the Egyptian vultures, a great number of snake eagles nest in the area and it is thought that an entire generation of their chicks were harmed. The burning of enormous areas reduces the sources of available food. The pressure of predators and competition will increase greatly – and this too will have long-term consequences for many of the animals. “It’s a shame you didn’t come in the morning,” says Maatof in the Gamla reserve. “There were four Egyptian vultures here above us, it was amazing.”
Dr. Amit Dolev, the northern district ecologist for the parks authority, explained the broader picture: “The fires are a difficult and traumatic event for the land, with an incredibly strong fire and great heat. Animals try to escape, but not all of them succeed. The small animals, reptiles and mammals aren’t able to flee from the flames, so some of them suffocate or are burned from the smoke or die from the heat. For the plants, especially the trees, it will take a long time to return to the height they were before. The shrub grassland that burns may recover quickly, but the quantities of available food in the summer for animals is drastically reduced,” he said.
A project for returning gazelles back to nature exists in the Gamla reserve. These are gazelles who were confiscated from people who raised them privately, and which were previously treated at the animal hospital in the Safari Zoo in Ramat Gan and later brought to Gamla to prepare them for their release back into nature in the Golan Heights. On the day we visited, there were seven young foals that had been brought there about two weeks earlier. They looked very frightened. The Parks and Nature Authority workers who take care of the gazelles in Gamla are on constant alert to evacuate them to safer locations in case of fire spreading in the area.
They too are evacuees, I thought to myself. They are tense, under great pressure, living in uncertainly far from their homes, too, like many of the residents of northern Israel. They, too, receive food and water from the authorities, but it doesn’t calm them. They don’t look happy either, and they have no idea what will happen here two days from now.
The difference between us and the scared gazelles at Gamla is that we know the local history – and it is terrifying. The Jewish city of Gamla was destroyed during the Great Revolt against the Romans at the end of the Second Temple period. Josephus Flavius, the commander of the Jewish forces in the Galilee during the revolt, ordered the fortification of Gamla, making it his main bastion in the Golan Heights in 66 CE. The commander of the Roman army in the region – and later emperor – Vespasian, set siege to the city. About 4,000 of Gamla’s residents were massacred. Another 5,000 chose to jump to their deaths from the top of the cliff. Altogether, 9,000 of the Jewish residents died. Dear gazelles, I told myself in a convincing voice, history does not repeat itself, not in any way.