Nature and Parks Authority

Ministry of the Environment Ministry of the Environment of Israel The Ministry of the Environment in the State of Israel is one of government offices that is in charge of protecting the cleanliness of all public areas and preventing contamination of water resources, among other things...
Established:	April, 1998

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (רשות הטבע והגנים)(Rashut Hateva Vehaganim) is a government organization in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 that manages the country's nature reserves and national parks. The organization was founded in April 1998, merging two organizations that had managed the nature reserves and national parks separately since 1964.

Regions

The authority oversees 66 National Parks and 230 Nature Reserve

Nature reserve

A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research...

s. All parks and nature reserves are divided into six regions:

• Golan Heights, Sea of Galilee
  Sea of Galilee
  The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias , is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. The lake has a total area of , and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m...
  
  , and Galilee
  Galilee
  Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...
  
  
• Lower Galilee and the valleys
• Mt. Carmel, the coast, and central Israel
• Judean Desert
  Judean desert
  The Judaean Desert is a desert in Israel and the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El, and is marked by terraces with escarpments. It ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Dead Sea and the Jordan...
  
   and The Dead Sea
• The Negev
  Negev
  The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
  
  
• Eliat and the Arava
  Arabah
  The Arabah , also known as Aravah, is a section of the Great Rift Valley running in a north-south orientation between the southern end of the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea and continuing further south where it ends at the Gulf of Aqaba. It includes most of the border between Israel to the...
  
  

External links

• Israel Nature & Parks Authority The Official Website