Every year from July through September, thousands of vulnerable sea turtle hatchlings are released into Israel’s waters under the watch of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and its National Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
Protecting and monitoring nests and hatchlings is part of their conservation efforts to bolster populations of green and loggerhead sea turtles, both of which have experienced significant declines over the past century.
With the hatching season under way, Erez Erlichman, the rescue center’s volunteer and media manager, said he hopes that hatchling numbers will grow, but cautions that conservation efforts still face many obstacles – specifically, recent military conflicts on the very beaches where the green and loggerhead turtles come to nest every May through August.
“It affects our ability to track all the nests [when] you can’t be around the natural area because of missile threats. So, there were some periods of time that we didn’t know where the nests were,” said Erlichman, about the intensified rocket and drone fire that made fieldwork unsafe.
Protecting turtles
The rescue center, located in Beit Yannai within the Alexander Stream National Park, has been tracking and protecting sea turtles for over 25 years, since its founding in 1999 by Dr. Yaniv Levy, the center’s director.
The center’s 10 staff members and marine biologists, together with the help of some 300 dedicated Nature and Parks Authority volunteers, act as guardians for the nests because public beaches are filled with human hazards like off-road vehicles, foot traffic, and artificial light pollution. They also care for injured sea turtles, many of which are brought in following reports from members of the public, and work to rehabilitate sea turtle populations.
In December 2025, the center inaugurated its brand new facility following a massive NIS 30 million renovation designed to support rehabilitation of the turtles with upgraded medical and educational efforts, including an on-site X-ray and operating room.
The premier initiative is a green sea turtle breeding nucleus, which the rescue center said is the world’s first and only captive breeding program of its kind for this species.
“It’s like a factory, an endangered factory… We are contributing their eggs to the wild,” said Erlichman, a former wildlife and environmental journalist for Ynet who covered the center’s work many times before joining its efforts.
Decades-long project
Known as the Green Project, the program started in 2002. Because sea turtles require 20 to 30 years to achieve sexual maturity, the fruits of this decades-long project are finally beginning to show. A February 2026 report shows the program has produced its first 11 viable egg clutches.
The project also includes turtles with disabilities, like a missing flipper from fishing gear entanglement, giving them a chance to reproduce.
“The reproductive period of any population in nature is the most sensitive period, because that is the time when the population renews itself,” Dr. Ateret Shabtay, a marine ecologist for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), explains in a Zoom interview.
“Only a really, really tiny fraction of all those eggs that are laid actually become mature and fertile turtles. That means that if, from the outset, we harm this stage, we have reason to fear that the impact on the population over time will be very, very great.”
While the center focuses on clinical rehabilitation, SPNI pushes for policies like marine “no-take zones,” though advancing legislation during an active security crisis remains a big ask.
“At the policy level… it is very, very difficult to advance environmental issues in a situation like this where everything else seems more urgent,” Shabtay admitted.
And still, Erlichman is optimistic.
“We are hoping to see who will be the lucky ones this year,” said Erlichman, speaking in a soft, thoughtful tone while sitting beside a viewing window of a tank where large sea turtles glide through the water.
Ecological paradox
Despite the war, the population has shown an overall trend of growth. The February 2026 report showed that 562 clutches were laid and 28,086 hatchlings were released during the 2025 season. Ironically, the conflicts introduced an ecological paradox: empty beaches are safe beaches.
“The sea turtles don’t know that there is a war,” Erlichman said. “When there is war, there are fewer people in nature… Quiet is good for the sea turtles.”
Last year, 109 green sea turtle nests were recorded on the beaches of Israel, which can be attributed to approximately 27 females, said Erlichman, noting they do not return to nest every year.
Even with rising numbers, the species needs help. The regional population of green and loggerhead turtles once numbered in the tens of thousands, but today includes only about 450 breeding green sea turtle females across the entire Mediterranean.
Environmental hazards
Beyond the conflict, the main cause of injury remains plastic entanglement and occasional blast injuries from explosions at sea.
Volunteers like Ofek Meiri, a marine biology student who has been at the center for six months, spend their weeks cleaning recovery tanks, preparing precise diets, and tracking health metrics for the injured green and loggerhead patients.
“It does my heart good to take care of them during the week and help,” she said.
According to reports by the United Nations Environment Program, the environment is often the “unpublicized victim of war.” Yet against those odds, the volunteers and staff at the rescue center are looking forward to seeing how many hatchlings will be released to the Mediterranean Sea this hatching season.
While these last few years have seen an uptick in wars, this country is no stranger to conflict, and the Nature and Parks Authority website shows that the center’s overall success rate in releasing treated turtles back into the sea stands at about 70%.
For the volunteers helping at the clinic and on the beaches, the reward is helping the environment.
“To see them being released back home into the wild and finding mates, having offspring, things like that, it’s very fulfilling,” said volunteer Meiri with a smile. “It’s seeing that you’re helping nature, helping the planet.”■
This report was written as part of the ‘Art of Journalism’ workshop at the School of Communication, Reichman University.