Acknowledgments

The conference has been made possible due to the generous support of the following institutions / organizations:

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority
The Tel-Aviv University
The Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental & Energy Research
The Jacob Blaustein Center for Scientific Cooperation
The Zoological Society of Israel
The Ben-Gurion University Green Campus
The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History
The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
The Department of Landscape Architecture at the Technion
The Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
The Marco and Louise Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology

Members of the Scientific Committee:
Shirli Bar-David, Ben-Gurion University.
Eran Brokovich & Adi Levi, the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences.
Simon Nemtzov, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
Irina Levinsky, HaMaarag - Israel's National Nature Assessment Program
Yehoshua Shkedy, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
Assaf Shwartz, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Yaron Ziv, Ben-Gurion University.