Birds of Peace

Sheltered between a high wall and the back of my Jerusalem apartment building, there is a secret, wild garden where untended plant life grows in profusion. Ferns, roses and tiny yellow blossoms that open with the sunrise and slowly fold shut as evening falls.

Trees envelop the space, their branches swaying in the breeze. As I hang my laundry on the back porch to dry, I absorb the warm wind, the trees murmuring, the scents of teeming life. The tiny accidental garden is a haven for me and for the rose trees struggling out from between city stones.

It is also a haven for birds. When the weather grows warm and the flowers erupt from their long sleep, birds start arriving to fill the trees with their calls. For many of them, it is a short hiatus on a long journey.

All over Israel, millions of birds from around the world find temporary rest from their migratory exertions. Some birds hail from lands as distant from the Middle East as Scandinavia and the United Kingdom.

Their odysseys begin in a vast number of countries, Asian and European, yet in the end all the birds bound for Africa must pass through Israel to reach their respective destinations.

This is because Israel is uniquely situated at the junction of three continents, creating a bottleneck through which more than half a billion birds must pass on their way from Europe and Asia to their winter grounds in Africa.

Large birds are forced to travel over land rather than water, because the heat of the sun on the land creates a thermal wind that lifts them up thousands of feet.

The Great Rift Valley, an immense fissure in the earth that stretches from Turkey to Mozambique, is ideally suited for this purpose; and twice a year, millions upon millions of bird flocks thunder through the Valley, borne aloft on thermal currents.

The reliance of more than 500 species of birds on Israel for shelter and rest during migration means that Israel has a unique environmental responsibility: if the habitat for a species of birds disappears, that species could become extinct from the entire world.

This responsibility was recognized by Dr. Yossi Leshem, an ornithologist who created the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration in Latrun.

With cooperation from Tel Aviv University and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), Leshem is dedicated to projects that preserve avian wildlife throughout Israel.

He also believes that the nature of his work, which involves collaboration with ornithologists in Palestine, Jordan, and Germany,to name a few, will be instrumental in promoting peace.

This goal is expressed in the slogan of his organization, which is that "Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries."

Originally, Leshem's affinity with birds stemmed from a long-cherished dream to soar like the birds he had observed on nature walks with his mother on Mount Carmel. In pursuit of that dream, he applied for the Israeli Air Force (IAF) as young man.

But his eyesight did not meet the requirements for that of a pilot, and from that time on, Leshem poured his considerable energies into the study of ornithology instead.

Ironically, it was the IAF that gave Leshem his first mission more than 20 years ago: they faced a crisis caused by collisions between military aircraft and birds.

The density of the bird population flying over Israel, coupled with the unusual density of military planes in Israel's airspace, spelled disaster for both the IAF and the birds. Pilots had even been killed as a result of these collisions.

It seems difficult to believe that birds could be so dangerous to airplanes, but as Leshem told The New Scientist, "When a white pelican weighing 10 kilograms hits a plane going at 800 kilometers per hour, at the point of impact there will be a force exerted on the plane the equivalent to 100 tons. It's devastating."

Using techniques as sophisticated as radar and satellite signals, Leshem began tracking the flight pathways of all the birds migrating through Israel. Some of the birds can even be observed on Leshem's website through live cameras.

His work has led to a dramatic decrease in bird collisions, and since then Leshem's horizons have expanded to include all the birds in the Middle East and in Africa as well. 

Because the study of birds necessitates international collaboration, Leshem believes that birds are purveyors of peace.

He himself has a joint project with the Palestine Wildlife Society to track the migration paths of storks. Before the intifada in 2000, schools in Palestine, Jordan and Israel brought 5000 children together - Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians - to learn about the migratory birds in the Middle East.

Today, Leshem seeks to build an international network based on the radar detection system, so that countries can alert each other to the passage of flocks of birds. During autumn migration, Turkey would warn Jordan of the incoming bird traffic, and Jordan would warn Israel, which would in turn warn Egypt. In the spring, the same network would take effect, but in reverse order.

Leshem's latest and perhaps most ambitious goal is to proclaim the Great Rift Valley a World Heritage Site through UNESCO. The corridor that stretches 7000 kilometers in length and serves as a migratory pathway for birds was once the land passage by which humans first traveled north from Africa and set the course of history so definitively on its path. That is one goal that Yossi Leshem has now determined upon, among many - for he has no shortage of goals. For more, he need simply look up at the sky.