Declaration on National Parks, Nature Reserves, National Sites and Memorial Sites (Protected Natural Assets), Proclamation, 2005 (5765-2005).

This Declaration updates the initial list of protected natural assets which was published in 1979. Scientists in the Nature and Parks Authority in cooperation with academic experts prepared the updated list on the basis of many years of scientific surveys and research, including the information compiled for Israel's Red Data Book on Vertebrates and its Red List of wild plants. Israel's National Parks, Nature Reserves, Memorial Sites and National Sites Law of 1992 relates, inter alia, to the declaration of "protected natural assets," defined as flora, fauna or minerals, which, in the opinion of the Minister of Environmental Protection, are valuable for protection and are at risk of extinction. The law prohibits destroying, possessing or trading in these protected natural assets. The list is based on five major criteria: rarity, extinction rate and habitat vulnerability, attractiveness, endemism and peripherality.