Is biodiversity in the drylands particularly low?

The Kalahari Desert or the Samburu Ecosystem are well protected semi-arid to arid ecosystems similar to the Northern Negev – nevertheless the whole African megafauna including lions, elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, hundreds of other mammals, reptiles and bird species are found there together with diverse plant life, similar or higher than in much more humid ecosystems.

You can use the following links to dig deeper and learn more about the plant biodiversity and animal biodiversity found specifically at Project Wadi Attir such as these harvester ants in the picture.

In spite of low productivity, dry ecosystems can offer a wide variety of habitats and niches allowing many plant and animal species to thrive. Well-functioning dry ecosystems are composed of perennial plant and shrub patches, often thorny, fruit bearing dryland trees, rich and diverse annual or seasonal herbaceous vegetation (Fig. 25 Biodiversity), as well as areas of exposed soil, rock or sand that offer habitat to pioneer and specialist species. Therefore often such drylands feature a wild mixture of generalists that are equally frequent in temperate Europe as in the arid Negev (e.g. foxes and wolves), together with absolute desert survival specialists (such as Acacia trees or the exclusively sand dwelling horned vipers that survive exclusively in hot and dry environments.

Indeed very large dryland areas, and most of the Negev Desert in Israel, are gravely degraded by thousands of years of farming, grazing, and wood-gathering that have left vegetation and soils depleted due to severe erosion, with very low biological productivity and strongly reduced plant biodiversity.

Specifically most trees and woody perennials have been extinct from the area. Such degraded ecosystems leave ample habitat for true desert dwellers and pioneer plants, but strongly reduced diversity and number of more demanding plant and animal species. Therefore restoration efforts at Wadi Attir and nearby, involving soil improvement, tree planting utilizing a Permaculture and Agroforestry approach and protection from grazing, have shown immediate progress towards creating more diverse, more productive and more resilient ecosystems. Similarly biodiversity in those restored systems is rapidly growing, with far more plant and animal species recorded now than before project start.