About

The Ministry of Environmental Protection was founded in 1989 according to the Government Decision no 5 from 1988. The ministry activities cover three levels – national, regional, local. The Ministry of Environmental Protection goals is to achieve a sustainable environment in Israel which provides quality of life and environmental safety to its population through wise use of resources and preservation of ecosystems out of a commitment to human welfare and to the values of nature, to landscape and to the heritage for present and future generations.

The Ministry is responsible for formulating an integrated and comprehensive national policy and for the development of strategies for environmental protection standards and priorities. At this level, various divisions of the Ministry deal with a range of environmental issues, the administrative apparatus and the interaction with the public.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority is a government corporation supervised by the Ministry of the Environment and whose task is to protect nature, the landscape and the heritage sites in Israel. In order to fulfill its mission properly, the Nature and Parks Authority has set three main goals:

1. Protecting biodiversity, ecosystems and Israel landscape in national parks, nature reserves and open spaces.
2. Protecting heritage sites in national parks and nature reserves and keeping them accessible to the public.
3. Informational and Educational measures so to encourage public to be more aware to the preservation of nature values, landscape and heritage.

The main fields of activity of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) include forestry and environment, water and river rehabilitation, settlement and breakthrough, education and youth, tourism and activities in forests and parks, research and development. KKL-JNF has taken upon itself the development of forest for community welfare and biosphere parks that encourages life quality of communities living around the forests and in open spaces while preserving nature and environment.

KKL-JNF is the competent forestry authority of the State of Israel acting through the channel of the Land Development Administration, in accordance with the convention signed in 1961. KKL-JNF's forestry policy is intended to serve all citizens of the State of Israel today and in the future. KKL-JNF is responsible for some 1,500,000 dunams of forest and nature woodland throughout Israel, with more than 240 million planted trees. In addition, KKL-JNF is responsible for taking care of about 400,000 dunams of nature woodland and for the fencing and regulation of about 400,000 additional dunams of pastureland.