Giora Ilani, a zoologist who knew the animals in the Land of Israel, and among other things identified the Shit deer and followed the tigers in the south, and also a good friend, passed away today
Giora Ilani, born in 1937 in Gan Shmuel, spent most of his life in zoological activity for the preservation of flora and fauna, while staying in Arava, Yotbata, Eilat Field School, Sapir in the Arava.
The prairie was his natural home and where he felt at his best. Observations of animals and plants and training at the Field School were the first steps, in his observations of deer in the south of the Arabah, he identified and defined for the first time the gazelle gazelle Arabica, a subspecies of the Israeli gazelle that was later called the Shit's gazelle.
I met Giora for the first time while working together at the Nature Reserves Authority as a zoologist for the authority. Ilani initiated and participated in the deer counts in the Negev and the Arabah for the first time, brought the first panak foxes from the Sinai deserts that constitute a breeding nucleus, recognized for the first time the reality of desert cats in our environment.
When rumors of encounters with tigers began to arrive and when I recognized signs of activity and the presence of tigers in the wadis of the Judean Desert, Giora was the first to accept the information as significant and obtained budgets to verify the presence, to monitor and study the tiger population. His blessed activity in the study of tigers of the Judean desert published him as "the man of the tigers".
In his last years he published his diaries in the book "Memoirs of an Israeli Zoologist". Giora was a different zoologist, who does not submit to conventions and does not follow the rut. On 30/01/09 he died after a long illness.
Giora was a dear friend, may his memory be blessed.
9 תגובות
I meant and wrote an obituary for a friend
I didn't want to get into an argument
Certainly not a debate in which one side is fed by journalistic stories
(Tzur Shizaf is a journalist .. and nothing else)
As for the facts:
During the time Giora worked at the "authority" the tiger population grew, grew and multiplied,
The fall began after Giora stopped his work/research,
Giora raised a tigress in his home in Sapir (a cub of the first tigress that was taken out of a goat's eye),
Without her cultivation she would have become extinct, unfortunately "nice" neighbors poisoned her...
From the tiger broadcast, after testing, advice and guidance from the best tiger researchers in the world,
The knowledge and understanding of the ecology of tigers in Israel and around the world has grown and expanded as a result of monitoring
After Nimri Desert-Judea... by Giura.
Although he did not hold an academic degree,
He was the sole and supreme authority on tiger matters in Israel,
Which annoyed many "professionals", and from here baseless and slanderous slanders grew.
As for the rumors... exactly as they are!
Or in other words, God!
http://shezaf.net/zope/home/he/3/24-il-tigers/
Tzur Shizaf's review of the state of tigers in Israel, a bit old but still relevant...
What is not mentioned, and it is said by professionals, that the "transmission" of the tigers by Gyura made it difficult for them to hunt...
Ein Gedi tigers were relatively small and the heavy transmitters made it difficult for them to hunt goats and rock hares,
In addition, there are rumors that the tigers held captive by Giora were in very poor physical condition and did not receive basic medical treatment, is this true?
Assaf, I'm sorry for my insolence, but in the test of the result there are no tigers in Ein Gedi today and Giura Ilani is perhaps one of the culprits...
I hesitated a lot whether to respond, since all I wanted was to be given a respectable platform
In memory of a friend,
Since I saw that the "issue" was developing, I decided to correct...
First of all, - (Nami?) - It's a bit cheeky to ask for a direct response without identification,
As a matter of fact:
In 1964 Bedouin was reported to have shot a tigress and that she had two young cubs,
We thought that this was the end of the tiger "episode" in Israel,
It turned out that we were wrong, zealous guarding and close supervision managed to restore the tiger population,
A female who gave birth near Kibbutz Ein Gedi "discovered" that it is easier to hunt dogs and cats
In the kibbutz, because of the threat from the members of the kibbutz, the female was removed from the area,
After a while the script repeated itself and another female was removed from the cycle,
Removing females caused a "fatal" imbalance as males kill young
to make their mother shut up,
And so because of a "fatal" combination, the breeding of tigers in the Judean desert stopped,
Blame Giora for that...?
Just be honest!
It is true that the remaining tiger population is tiny, but I am not at all sure that this is Giora Ilani's fault.
Anyway, I really appreciate his work. A few days ago I had the chance to read Yotam Timna's book about the tigers in Israel. I really enjoyed it.
Yotam
Nature Protection Society
Lanami the Tiger: It is very useful to check the facts in depth before hurling accusations at those who cannot respond. Do you know for sure that the population was exterminated? Can you point to the reasons for the elimination or perhaps you suggest that the deceased personally eliminated each and every tiger? In short - a word in stone but silence in my heart...
May I ask what the prolonged illness was?
May he and many more like him appreciate, cherish, respect, understand and preserve the nature in which we live and of which we are a part.
May his memory be blessed and blessed.
I was a friend of Ilani's children while my family lived in Sapir in the Arava.
Giora was definitely an unusual and unusual figure even in the landscape of the inhabitants of the Arava.
Of blessed memory.
sad for those who died,
But it cannot be ignored that as a warrior Ilani was directly responsible for the elimination of the tiger population in the Ein Gedi area,
Assaf Rosenthal, I would appreciate your response on the subject...
Nami