Summer 2026 is proving to be an important season for wildlife conservation at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.
Nine Persian fallow deer have been released into the wild. Hundreds of tadpoles from one of the world’s rarest amphibians have hatched. Griffon vulture eggs collected from nesting sites across Israel are part of an intensive effort to strengthen the country’s population of these great birds.
And much of this work is now connected through the Shai Doron Nature Conservation Center, which has opened in the zoo’s iconic Noah’s Ark building.
While summer visitors are enjoying camps, animal encounters, behind-the-scenes tours and other activities at the zoo and Gottesman Family Israel Aquarium, an important conservation story is unfolding behind the scenes.
For an institution whose identity has long been connected to the wildlife of the Bible and the Holy Land, summer 2026 is offering fresh evidence that those connections are about more than remembering the past.
The goal is helping wildlife survive into the future.
Nine Deer Return to the Wild
One of the biggest developments this summer involves an animal Higher Calling Wildlife readers have encountered before.
After delays caused by the war, nine Persian fallow deer were successfully released into the Nahal Dolev Nature Reserve.
According to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, the release helped increase the estimated wild population in the Judean Hills to approximately 110 animals.
That geographic distinction is important. The figure refers specifically to the Judean Hills population, not the total number of Persian fallow deer living in the wild across Israel.
It’s an encouraging summer update to one of Israel’s most remarkable wildlife restoration stories.
Higher Calling Wildlife recently took readers inside the history and conservation work behind this extraordinary comeback in Restoring Eden’s Deer, our in-depth look at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo’s Persian fallow deer restoration project.
The nine animals released this year represent the next chapter rather than a retelling of that story.
Each successful release moves the project farther from its beginnings in captive conservation and closer toward its ultimate objective: a thriving wild population.
Seeing Persian fallow deer living once again in the Judean Hills would have been almost unimaginable when the species’ future was hanging by a thread.
Today, the work continues one animal at a time.
A Summer Boost for Griffon Vultures
Another major conservation effort underway in 2026 is taking place at the National Incubation Center for Birds of Prey.
The zoo reports that 28 griffon vulture eggs arrived from nesting sites across Israel, with 16 determined to be fertile. Chicks that hatch will be placed with carefully selected foster pairs by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority as part of the national recovery program.
It is conservation at its most hands-on.
Wildlife restoration is often associated with enormous landscapes, habitat protection and animals being released into wilderness. Sometimes, however, the future of a species can depend upon something as fragile as an egg and the people with the knowledge to give the life inside it its best opportunity to survive.
The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo has been involved in griffon vulture conservation for nearly three decades. Its work includes breeding birds, incubating eggs and helping raise young vultures for eventual release into the wild.
The challenges facing the birds are significant. Poisoning, collisions and electrocution involving power infrastructure, habitat loss and human disturbance have all contributed to their decline.
The summer 2026 eggs are therefore part of a much larger effort to keep these impressive scavengers in Israel’s skies.
300 Reasons for Hope
The smallest animals involved in the zoo’s summer conservation news might represent the most extraordinary development of all.
Approximately 300 Hula painted frog tadpoles have hatched at the zoo’s conservation breeding center after months of research and breeding efforts.
That number becomes even more impressive when you consider the history of the Hula painted frog.
The species was last observed in the wild in 1955 and was officially declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1996. Then, in November 2011, a Hula painted frog was discovered in the Hula Valley.
A species the world believed it had lost was alive.
But rediscovering an animal and securing its future are two very different things.
The frog remains critically endangered and survives in only a handful of wetlands and waterways in the Hula Valley. The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, working closely with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, established an ex situ conservation program designed to create a backup population and increase scientific understanding of the animal.
Now summer 2026 brings an encouraging development in that effort.
Hundreds of tadpoles are alive at the conservation breeding center.
For an animal that disappeared from scientific observation for more than half a century, successful reproduction on this scale represents an important step.
Rediscovering an animal believed extinct is extraordinary.
Helping make sure it doesn’t disappear again is the harder task.
This summer, there are approximately 300 tiny reasons for hope.
New Life at the Zoo and Aquarium
Summer 2026 has brought other notable births and reproductive milestones as well.
The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo celebrated the birth of its first Bornean orangutan baby. Thirteen-year-old Suga and 19-year-old Ito welcomed a male named Chahaya, a name meaning “halo” or “light” in Indonesian.
Bornean orangutans are critically endangered, making the birth important beyond its obvious appeal to zoo visitors.
The Jerusalem Zoo’s orangutans participate in the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria breeding program, which carefully manages breeding according to factors including genetics and age to help maintain a healthy and genetically diverse population.
According to the zoo, only one Bornean orangutan infant was born in European zoos last year, adding significance to Chahaya’s arrival.
There has been significant news underwater as well.
At the Gottesman Family Israel Aquarium, golden dogfish sharks laid eggs in the Mediterranean Sea exhibit for the first time in the aquarium’s history.
Often called “mermaid’s purses,” the egg cases are attached to a rope within the exhibit where visitors can observe them.
For families visiting this summer, that creates an unusual opportunity to see a part of the shark life cycle most people will never encounter in the wild.
A Summer of Restoration
There is something especially fitting about this work taking place at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, an institution whose conservation mission includes restoring endangered native wildlife—including species that had disappeared from Israel—to the country’s natural landscapes.
But summer 2026 is about much more than looking backward.
The Persian fallow deer released into the Nahal Dolev Nature Reserve are part of a living restoration story unfolding in the Judean Hills. The griffon vulture work represents an effort to keep one of the region’s great birds soaring overhead. And perhaps most remarkably, hundreds of Hula painted frog tadpoles offer new hope for a species once believed to have vanished forever.
Those are significant victories, but conservation is rarely finished with a single release, successful hatch or breeding season. Each represents another step in work that can stretch across decades.
That makes the opening of the Shai Doron Nature Conservation Center in the zoo’s iconic Noah’s Ark building particularly appropriate.
The biblical ark represents preservation in the face of tremendous loss. The conservation work underway in Jerusalem during the summer of 2026 carries a modern echo of that idea—protecting wildlife while there is still time and, whenever possible, returning animals to the wild landscapes where they belong.
This summer, those efforts can be measured in very different ways: nine deer stepping back into the wild, developing vulture eggs carrying the possibility of future birds in Israel’s skies, and hundreds of tiny tadpoles from a species once written off as extinct.
For the Persian fallow deer roaming the Judean Hills and the Hula painted frogs beginning a new generation in Jerusalem, restoration is no longer just an aspiration.
It is happening now
Chester Moore
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