The Gazelle Valley green lung looks to add a visitors center, wading ponds, outdoor classrooms and shaded areas, as its guardians remain wary of money-making schemes to exploit the space.
By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMANThe Gazelle Valley(photo credit: DOV GREENBLAT)
At this time of year, Gazelle Valley is bathed in shades of brown and yellow, waiting for the winter rains. At 8 a.m., three graceful gazelles slowly emerge from their 8-hectare haven and approach a tree, eat their fill of olives and then shrink back into the fields.A small group of gazelles gathers at the foot of one of Gazelle Valley’s “outdoor classrooms.” Their big black eyes peek out from under the staircase to watch the daily yoga class.The valley, located on the edge of Givat Mordechai, opposite the busy Pat intersection, has been open for a year and a half. Today, there are 12 gazelles on the premises, interacting with more than 100,000 visitors a year. Over the Succot holiday, the average was 2,500 a day.A yet-to-be-published survey of young adults and families with young children among nearby residents by the Jerusalem Municipality asked whether they had visited Gazelle Valley in the past year and how they would rate their experience. Amir Balaban, urban wildlife artist and coordinator of the Urban Wildlife Initiative at the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the organization that oversees the valley on behalf of the municipality, said he had received preliminary results and that the overwhelming majority of residents said they had visited the space, had a positive experience and would recommend a visit to a friend.“We know the public is pleased with the outcome, well beyond expectations,” Balaban said. “People are voting with their feet.”On Succot, residents of the predominantly haredi Givat Shaul, largely Sephardi Katamonim and Arab-Israeli Beit Safafa neighborhoods joined together to lead an olive-picking workshop for valley visitors. Such an event could happen only in a place such as Gazelle Valley, said community activist Tal Perry, a resident of Givat Mordechai.Noted Perry, “Everyone feels good in nature.”The Gazelle Valley (photo credit: WILLY LINDWER)New developmentsGazelle Valley CEO Yael Hammerman Solar said there are plans for several additions to Gazelle Valley over the next 12 to 18 months.
The park has secured half of the $3 million needed to create a visitors’ center in the heart of the valley, which would become the predominant center for gazelle studies in Israel and possibly the whole world. Its design includes plans for teaching and conference facilities, a coffee shop and an additional research center for renewed water systems.The park created a water system that regulates runoff water flow from Nahal Rakafot. Annual winter rains cause flooding and discharge a large quantity of urban contaminants – oil, floating wastes – into the stream bed. The water system comprises five pools that filter the water by means of a pump. The stream and the pool serve as a habitat for aquatic plants and wildlife and as a natural border for the area designated for rehabilitating the gazelle herd and the areas intended for visitor activities.Future plans entail adding additional recycled water to the system, which will allow all ponds to be filled throughout the year. Currently, only two ponds are usable year-round.In the meantime, visitors enjoy seeing these uncommon ponds of water in the middle of the city. One of the ponds is available for visitor wading. Two additional wading ponds are planned for this year.Funds are being raised to convert an old orchard guardhouse into a small center for community activities, where volunteer guides could be trained and then offer information on the valley and help visitors prepare for their visit inside the park.Balaban said more than 3,000 hours of volunteer work was done in the last 18 months by teens at risk, Birthright Israel visitors and senior citizens, among others.Funds secured through the Jerusalem Foundation will enable three additional outdoor classrooms to be built by the end of next year; one donated by a private Israeli donor is already standing. These classrooms are used by local schools and youth groups for activities and learning in the park.“When you are sitting in a classroom and there are gazelles sitting under the stairs – this is something that makes your day,” said Balaban.Finally, Solar said visitors can expect to see at least 30 more shaded areas erected this year. These will vary between concentrated groupings of high trees and wooden pergolas.“It has been a year of learning and now will be a year of implementation,” said Ariella Cwikel, director of the municipality’s community sustainability unit.Natural bondingEach addition to Gazelle Valley is not only a win for urban wildlife but a celebration and reminder of the unique and collaborative 10-year battle by local residents to preserve and then design the only remaining plot of greenery in their area.“The fight for Gazelle Valley brought people together and it continues to bring people together,” Perry said.The site’s almost 26 hectares were originally leased by two kibbutzim, Ma’aleh Hahamisha and Kiryat Anavim, which were tasked with developing orchards and growing fruit for the city immediately after the War of Independence. By the 1970s and early 1980s, as agriculture declined, these kibbutzim let their lease expire, and the land lay dormant.In the 1990s, the kibbutzim tried to again gain access to the land to build a 1,400-housing unit upscale residential neighborhood.In an unparalleled move, residents from the poorer Katamonim neighborhood joined with the national- religious and more affluent residents of Givat Mordechai, environment-focused NGOs, including the SPNI, and other activists to fight for the valley. The residents worried about the housing project’s impact on their neighborhoods. Environmentalists understood the need for a green lung to replenish the air with oxygen in what was becoming an increasingly urbanized area of the city.Furthermore, Gazelle Valley was home to Jerusalem’s few remaining Israeli mountain gazelles, whose population had been dwindling since the 1980s, as urban development had spread so frantically that the valley was separated, by pavement, from the rest of the Judean Hills’ natural habitats.Even as the battle ensued, Balaban said jackals and feral dogs had been entering the valley and killing off the gazelles. Others died because people would enter the area with their dogs, which would chase the gazelles into the neighboring highway, where they would be run over, added Cwikel.The Jerusalem gazelle is the biblical gazelle mentioned in the Song of Songs, according to Balaban.“It has beauty and strength. Jerusalem and gazelles always went together,” he said.The residents’ campaign was fought over nearly 10 years, until ultimately they succeeded in stopping the developer’s plans and receiving a commitment by the municipality to develop the area into Israel’s largest community urban wildlife site.“At a certain point during the struggle, we were approached by the city planner, who said ‘Don’t only tell us what you are against, but also what you are in favor of,’” said Perry, who actively worked to save the valley.Perry said the committee fighting to preserve the valley called upon all the people living in the area to participate in making a plan for land. Today’s Gazelle Valley is a result of those efforts. A community planning committee continues to play an active role, meeting twice yearly and weighing in on any valley developments.Yona Sosner, a resident of Ein Kerem, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the struggle for Gazelle Valley, examined the dynamics of the struggle and how disadvantaged residents of the Katamonim area came to cooperate with the residents of Givat Mordechai. She said that generally, economically challenged families focus on struggles for basic survival and not broader quality-of-life issues, such as the environment.“The residents of Givat Mordechai and all of the NGOs came together to form a kind of umbrella group, which made it easier for the residents of the Katamonim to feel supported and go out for the struggle,” said Sosner. “It was a partnership.”Sosner said the united front was key to the community’s win, noting that while residents of Givat Mordechai played more of a strategic role, the people of the Katamonim protested with their feet, taking to the streets with torches, stuffing kibbutz mailboxes with letters informing residents that allowing developers to take over their only green space was not right and took away their basic rights to quality of life.Perry noted how the struggle for Gazelle Valley has become a model for residents in other areas of the country. For example, she said she knows Gazelle Valley was the encouragement behind a group of residents and NGOs who fought a five-year battle that ended in January 2016 to preserve the Palmahim shoreline and sponsor an open park plan, overriding plans by developers to build a resort village there.Still on guard Not all challenges are behind the Jerusalem residents and Gazelle Valley. Perry and Balaban said “strong voices” remain in and outside the municipality that want to use this space for making money.“These are not the old developers,” said Perry. “There are new people who want to try to control the valley, creating more obstacles along the way.”As recently as March 2016, religious and haredi members of Jerusalem’s city council attempted to cancel a tender for managing the Gazelle Valley Park. The SPNI had been the only bidder, and hence a member of the council voted against approving the tender. The result would have been that nobody was legally responsible for managing the park, which would have endangered its survival and called into question its future. Ultimately, the SPNI won the bid.Perry said that regularly there are voices threatening to hijack and exploit the park to make money.Currently, nothing is sold at the park. She said because Gazelle Valley is the only entity of its kind, not enough definitions and regulations exist to let her guard down.“I cannot say with 100% certainty that the valley will stay as is and be even nicer in 10 years,” said Perry.“I feel we have to be on guard all the time.”A view to the futureBalaban, too, said voices of opposition still exist, but he is confident that the Gazelle Valley will be preserved, due to the massive number of development opportunities around the valley, from the Botanical Gardens and residential facilities planned for the renovated Golomb interchange, to the next phase of the light rail and the redevelopment of the Pat intersection.He noted that friends and colleagues who have looked to purchase apartments in the area have seen a spike in prices due to the park, and that developers renovating older apartments are shifting utility porches to the back of the buildings and facing living areas and larger porches toward Gazelle Valley.“Everyone wants to see the lake, the orchard and view the gazelles,” said Balaban.In his vision, Gazelle Valley will become not only a model of how a community struggle can turn into a success, but also a model for urban wildlife sites through the city. A 2010 study conducted by the municipality and the Environmental Protection Ministry mapped 150 potential urban wildlife sites in Jerusalem, of which only four have seen any development – Gazelle Valley, the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, the Jerusalem Forest and Bible Hill.“It is worthwhile thinking of how to create a network of community urban wildlife sites focusing on the unique natural heritage of every part of the city – northwestern, eastern, southeastern,” said Balaban.“Here lies so much potential.”Trash-free trash-can-free zone Families who spend time at Gazelle Valley will notice the absence of any trash cans in the park. That’s because according to Gazelle Valley CEO Yael Hammerman Solar, trash cans actually cause trash, which can be dangerous for the gazelles.Solar said about eight months ago, one of the gazelles mysteriously started losing its fur and looking sick. A veterinarian could not determine the cause of illness, but an autopsy shortly after the gazelle’s death revealed plastic and other debris in her stomach.“People see trash cans and, even if they are full, will throw garbage on them,” explained Solar. “Also, when lids are left open, trash flies out and litters the park.”Instead, families who wish to picnic or throw items away are given disposable bags when they enter the facility.At the end of their stay, they are requested to bring the bags to the entrance, where recycling and trash bins allow them to properly dispose of their refuse. Volunteers patrol the park to remind visitors of the policy.Solar said Gazelle Valley is among the cleanest parks in Israel.“We have signs, but we don’t wait for people to read the signs, we actively tell them,” Solar said. “It’s not a very sophisticated system, but it works.”