When TIME Magazine named 45 'Heroes of the Environment' earlier this week, Israeli environmentalist Benjamin Kahn was among them.
The honor was noted by the magazine as a choice of "environmental heroes that have stepped into the silence, and in doing so, have given the earth a voice. It remains for the rest of us to listen - and join them."
Kahn is the board chairman of Israel’s environmental coastline watchdog organization Zalul which he co-founded in 1999. A marine biologist by profession, he has “always been in love with the sea.”
As a child Kahn snorkeled in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, famous for its coral reefs and multicolored tropical fish. After studying marine biology and living in the U.S. and Australia for a number of years, Kahn returned to Israel in 2000 to discover that the coral reef had drastically deteriorated - the result of years of human contact.
"I knew that if the reef was going to survive someone had to fight for it," Kahn told TIME.
Kahn commissioned his family's marine-park scientists to come up with new ways of helping the battered coral recover. He and other divers started a project of collecting reef fragments broken off in stormy weather. They then gave them out to 5,000 school kids to grow like saltwater saplings for months in classroom tubs. Then divers carefully reattach the living fragments back onto the reef.
Through Zalul Kahn has also won a major environmental victory in Eilat. After years of demonstrations, legal battles and court decisions Zalul and other green organizations forced giant fish farms built in 1997 out of the gulf. Following a five-year campaign, the Israeli government passed a resolution in 2005 to gradually force companies to remove a third of fish farming cages each year until 2008.
"When all the cages are gone, maybe the reef can revive itself," Kahn said. "It's our only chance of regaining the amazing vibrancy the reef once had."
