The Yotvata Hai-Bar Nature Reserve is a 3,000-acre (12 km2) breeding and reacclimation center administered by the Israel Nature Reserves & National Parks Authority, situated in the Southern Arabah near Yotvata.
The Yotvata Hai-Bar is the desert counterpart of the Carmel Hai-Bar Nature Reserve which operates in the country's Northern Mediterranean forest.
Endangered and locally extinct animals mentioned in the Bible are bred here for possible reintroduction to the Negev desert. The Asian Wild Ass has already been reintroduced in the Makhtesh Ramon into the wild. In addtition the park has some rare desert animals, which are not native to Israel, like the Scimitar Oryx from northern Africa.
Some of the species bred here are:
- Arabian Oryx (O. leucoryx)
- Scimitar Oryx (O. dammah)
- Ostrich (S. c. camelus)
- Addax (A. nasomaculatus)
- Asian Wild Ass (hybrids of E. h. kulan and E. h. onager)
- Somali Wild Ass (E. a. somaliensis)
- Caracal (Caracal caracal schmitzi)
- Sand Cat (Felis margarita harrisoni)
- Arabian Leopard (P. p. nimr)
- Arabian Wolf
- Dorcas Gazelle
- Griffon Vulture
- Nubian Ibex
-
Arabian Oryx
-
Asian Wild Ass
-
Ostrich
-
Scimitar Oryx
Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or reserve:
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)