SASSDS students to participate in Israeli bird migration study

The Jewish Advocate, December 5, 2007 by Lorne Bell

Project aims to decrease in-air collisions

With all the religious and historical sites to see in Israel, bird watching might not be high on visitors’ lists of things to do. But students at Norwood’s South Area Solomon Schechter Day School will journey to the Jewish homeland in January specifically to study its avian population.

As part of the “Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries” program, the school’s eighth graders will join students and scientists from Israel and Russia to observe the migration patterns of millions of birds traveling through Israel’s Hula Valley in an effort to reduce in-flight collisions between the birds and military airplanes.

“There is a lot of excitement on both sides of the ocean,” said Professor Nitzan Resnick, head of Solomon Schechter’s New Science and Math Curriculum. “Our students will be in Israel for 10 days, but the trip is part of an ongoing collaborative project between our school and our sister school in Haifa.”

The students from Solomon Schechter, together with students from Haifa’s Ironi Gimmel School, will design independent research projects based on their observations of the massive migrations. They will incorporate elements of physics, geology, climatology and bird anatomy and physiology into their work. Students from both schools will then present their collaborative findings at the Solomon Schechter science fair in May.

But the trip will also serve to strengthen the students’ knowledge of and personal ties with the Jewish State, according to Resnick.
“Because birds migrate throughout Israel, we will travel from Haifa through the Golan Heights, Galilee, the Dead Sea, Masada, the Negev, and Jerusalem” she said. “Part of the trip is science, but it is also a combination of [Israel’s] history and the history of Zionism.”

In all, 19 students from Solomon Schechter will make the trip, along with three teachers, a local rabbi, and MIT Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Lawrence Young. The students will hear Young and several other leading scientists lecture at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

“The idea of trying to get bright young people turned on, as well as strengthen their ties to Israel, is rewarding and exciting,” said Young. “I hope they will learn that they have a lot in common with the students in Haifa and elsewhere, and that this experience will help them foresee a better world ahead.”

The “Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries” program grew out of a 13-year-old study started by Yossi Leshem, professor of zoology at Tel Aviv University. Leshem wanted to find a solution to what had become a serious issue for the Israeli Air Force: collisions with migrating birds in and around Latrun. The migration phenomenon is unique to Israel, which is a “bottleneck” for birds migrating between Africa, Europe and Asia.

“Five hundred million birds migrate through the area every autumn and spring,” said Leshem. “It was a big problem for the Air Force. They lost nine aircraft, three pilots were killed, and thousands of smaller collisions [occurred].”

The work done by Leshem and his colleagues at Latrun’s International Center for the Study of Bird Migration – a world-renowned research facility founded by Tel Aviv University and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel – has reduced the number of collisions between military planes and birds by 76 percent since 1984, saving the air force some $730 million.

Leshem expanded the study into an academic program in 2004, giving students the opportunity to collaborate and find innovative solutions of their own. As part of their trip to Israel, students visit the air force base and witness how small ideas – a strategically placed sculpture or an overzealous bird-chasing dog – can have a significant impact on the safety of military pilots.

“The Israeli government has a special interest in any new findings,” said Resnick. “Perhaps something we learn will help to save lives one day.”

But Leshem also hopes the program will build intellectual and personal bonds between students in the U.S., Israel and Russia. Previous projects have included students from 30 Palestinian and Jordanian schools, as well.

“The vision was to get students to communicate with each other,” said Leshem. “The birds don’t care about political boundaries.”

For more information, contact 781-760-5555.