Shomera:
The Jerusalem forest once filled thousands of acres and provided residents and tourists to the capital with a green, natural corner in the very heart of the city. This JNF-planted forest, however, is a fraction of its original size, dwindling after fifty years of urban development. The latest in this litany of projects is a proposal to build a traffic overpass that would connect the surrounding neighborhoods to the newly expanded Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, Highway 1.
Today, however, several local environmental groups in Jerusalem exist and are speaking out against the project. Perhaps the most active of these is Shomera, a green group based in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, whose members are predominantly orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews. To succeed in their campaign, they seek to provide an alternative transportation solution that would allow cars the same access to the highway using underground tunnels that would not damage the forest. The Tal Fund has provided a grant to support the hiring of an expert traffic engineer to this end to enhance the professionalism of the organization’s campaign.