Following nearly a decade of advocacy, the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Council finally approved the Gazelle Valley Park Reserve Plan recently. The humans who were leading the battle were the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and host of community groups and NGOs on the one side and private developer Zecharia Kahalani, representing Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim and Kibbutz Ma'aleh Hahamisha, on the other.

Kahalani et al have been trying to develop Gazelle Valley since 2000, when they went public with plans to build an upscale residential neighborhood on the 227-dunam site, which is home to central Jerusalem's only remaining indigenous gazelle population. The gazelle community had been dwindling since the mid-1980s, when Jerusalem's urban development had spread so recklessly that the valley was separated by pavement from the rest of the Judean Hills' natural habitats.

According to the SPNI, wild jackals have been killing off the gazelles in recent months, with possibly no more than a handful remaining there today.

A watershed event in the annals of conscionable Jerusalem city planning, which is what ecologically conscious voters were hoping for when they elected Nir Barkat as mayor, the Gazelle Valley Park Reserve Plan calls for a park that will be open to humans from the general public, running alongside a natural habitat reserve for the gazelles.

The SPNI plans to replenish the reserve's gazelle population once the area is secured. Work on the site may begin in the coming months, depending on municipal budgetary considerations.

Image courtesy of Amir Balaban for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.