Since the outbreak of the Iron Swords War, the pastoral, green and peaceful north is not the same: the day after October 7, residents of the Upper Galilee were ordered to evacuate their homes, not knowing when they would return. In one fell swoop, like many Israeli citizens, the residents of the Galilee became refugees in their own country.
On the morning of October 8, on the board of the office of the Wildlife Acculturation Center at Agamon Hula were listed, as they do every day, with a to-do list for working with patients at the clinic: a gray heron had to be medicated and monitored for its recovering wing; A pygmy eagle was going to move to a larger cage to practice flying; A tree falcon faced a pre-release flight test after being held captive; And a field rabbit puppy had to be weighed to make sure that her milk weaning process was complete, and that she was indeed eating and gaining weight, and the list goes on.
Cranes at Agamon Hula (archive), photo: Eyal Margolin - Ginny
The center includes a front clinic, chicks and advanced acclimatization cages, and was promoted in December 2019 under the leadership of Yaron Cherka, chief birder at the JNF, and Dr. Rona Nadler-Valensi, veterinarian and director of the acclimatization center. The main goal of the place is to rehabilitate injured and orphaned wild animals, and provide them with an optimal environment for successful release into the wild. It accepts only protected Israeli wildlife from the Galilee finger area, the Golan Heights and around the Sea of Galilee.
That Sunday, the primary caregiver at the May Abrahami Center spoke with Nadler-Valensi as each prepared to leave home. "It was one of the hardest conversations I've had in my career," Dr. Valensi says. "We decided together that the best option for the animals was to release them that day into the wild, even if they are not yet as ready as we would like."
The understanding that morning was that the entire staff of the acclimatization center, all residents of the area, were evacuated, and that there would be no one who could continue to care for and feed the animals, so the best option for them was to be released to the Agamon area, which was closed to visitors that day, and continue their rehabilitation in the wild independently. The acclimatization center was closed, and some of the workers were forced to go on unpaid leave.
Staff at the acclimatization center, photo: courtesy of the subjects
The Zimmer that became an improvised clinic
After the animals were released, the center's staff dispersed throughout the country. In the first weeks of the war, Avrahami received wounded animals for a resilience session where she stayed in a bed and breakfast complex: "Luckily, the owner of the complex is my partner's amazing mother, who immediately agreed to turn one of the guest rooms into an improvised and pleasant clinic. Despite the medical equipment I always have, treating these animals was challenging and required creativity, but the mission was clear – to diagnose, stabilize and urgently find transportation of the animals to the wildlife hospital in Ramat Gan, which was about two hours away from me."
Later, when it became clear that this war could last a long time, Nadler-Valensi met with the council security officer to see if it was possible to reopen the place on a limited basis. "The lake is considered an open area and as the northernmost border that can be conducted in a kind of routine manner. However, it is considered a yellow area and is not really protected if something happens in it. It's a calculated risk that I asked each of the staff members to take on when they arrived on the scene," she said.
And thank you to the soldiers. An injured fox treated at the acclimatization center, photo: Agamon Hula Wildlife Acclimatization Center
Yuli Vandermeer, the administration director of the acclimatization center, returned to her kibbutz, which was not one of the officially evacuated communities, and alongside the explosions, sirens and road blockages, she came together with Nadler-Valensi and Avrahami, who came from the evacuation sites, to work at the Agamon and provide a response. She said that during the fighting, only 17 animals arrived at the site, while in similar periods in previous years, more than 60 arrived, a 72% decrease in the number of patients.
"Wildlife continues to be harmed in wartime as it does in normal times, but this time the people who find the damaged animals are usually soldiers," Nadler-Valensi said. "This was the case with an adult fox that was found very dehydrated in a barrel marking a sector border by the Alexandroni Brigade in the Golan Heights. The soldiers contacted the regional inspector, who brought the dried fox for life-saving treatment at the Agamon clinic."
The fox could not stand on its feet, and after measurements were taken from it, it turned out that it was suffering from heat stroke, so it had to be gradually cooled while trying to open a vein so that they could give it fluids. "Fortunately, the indices improved from the very first hour, and a long sigh of relief blew out of me at the thought that without the soldiers' alertness, the incident could have ended completely differently," she added, noting that in the past week black, red-breasted dia and Armenian seagull also arrived for treatment at the site.
Treatment of injured black fiction at the acclimatization center // Photo: The Wildlife Accultiat Center at Agamon Hula
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