Joint operation of IDF and Israel Nature and Parks Authority frees adorable animal from fence on the Israel-Syria border.

Earlier this month, IDF tracker Warrant Officer Hussein Ghadir was on patrol in the Golan Heights when he noticed a badger on the Syrian side of the border struggling to get through the fence’s metal bars.

Ghadir alerted his superiors, and an officer from the IDF’s Bashan division immediately called the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA). INPA sent INPA park ranger Uriah Vazana and volunteer veterinarian Doron Tiomkin to the scene. “We started the treatment immediately, starting with sedating the badger so she wouldn’t resist our rescue attempts,” Vazana recounted to a Ynet reporter. “After we got her out, we made sure she was unharmed and later released her near a water source in known badger territory.”

The rescue was made possible thanks to the soldiers’ quick actions at the scene, Vazana noted. Yet it was hardly unprecedented. In June this year, local media reported that IDF tracker Master Sergeant Ghaleb Elabeed saved a badger in a similar situation on the Gaza border fence. “I approached the badger, but it recoiled and injured itself on the fence, so I had to act quickly,” Elabeed recounted.

IDF trackers can easily distinguish badger tracks. Badgers, members of the weasel family, are active mostly at night. They can be found throughout the Mediterranean region, including Israel from north to south. Elabeed, like many IDF trackers, was trained in the Army for the Protection of Nature project, a joint initiative of the IDF and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

The project encompasses every branch of the IDF and provides soldiers and officers with knowledge and resources to help protect Israel’s environment. It challenges IDF commanders to develop meaningful conservation and educational initiatives to protect biodiversity. Since the project was launched in 2014, it has swelled from eight to about 60 centers of activity covering all areas of Israel, reflecting the growing trend of environmental awareness.

The IDF controls half of Israel’s rarest habitats and ecosystems—loess plains, sandy dunes and Mediterranean deciduous forests—because they’re located in restricted security areas.

By Daniel Ben Tal, Israel 21C