Palestine Museum of Natural History, Natural history museum at Bethlehem University, Palestine.
The Palestine Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum on the campus of Bethlehem University in Bethlehem, gathering plants, animals, and insects from across the region alongside a botanical garden. It also runs a center for treating and rehabilitating injured wildlife found in the area.
The museum was founded in 2013 as a project of Bethlehem University and opened its doors to visitors in 2017. It was created to document the natural diversity found across Palestine.
A 2019 exhibition funded by the British Council documents Palestinian agricultural heritage through collected objects and oral histories, not a seed display. Related research at the museum tracks how traditional knowledge of wild plants has changed in the village of Artas. The museum also runs educational programmes for children.
The museum sits on the Bethlehem University campus, which is easy to reach on foot from the center of town. It is generally open most days of the week, so it is worth checking ahead for any closures around local holidays.
The museum's own garden produced two notable firsts: the invasive butterfly Cacyreus marshalli was recorded in Palestine for the first time there, and a Kuhl's pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus kuhlii) was found caught in Picris altissima, the first record of a bat ensnared by a plant in the Arab world.
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