The lecture Prof. Uri Roll was about to help teach was meant to tell a familiar conservation story: a species lost forever.
It was October 2011, and Roll, then completing his PhD at Tel Aviv University, was preparing a class on the ecological consequences of draining the Hula wetlands.
Among the victims was the Hula painted frog, an amphibian found only in northern Israel. Last seen in the 1950s, it had become the first amphibian ever declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Moments before the lecture, his phone buzzed. His professor had sent him several photographs.
“They were pictures of the Hula painted frog,” Roll recalled. “Obviously nobody had photographs like that.”
Convinced there had been some mistake, he immediately called, and the answer seemed almost impossible. “They had potentially rediscovered the species.” The lecture suddenly required a different ending. The next day, they raised champagne glasses.
For conservation biologists, such moments are extraordinarily rare. Their work is often defined by documenting decline, and while success stories exist, they are few.
“A lot of the things going on around us are negative. Extinction of species is happening around us, and we document it and try to learn from it,” said Roll, who heads the Conservation Biology and Biodiversity Lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
His research ranges from global analyses of biodiversity to endangered species in Israel, all connected by a central question: How can a better understanding of nature and of our relationship with it help protect it?
“Conservation biology is the overarching theme,” he explained, “but I explore it across different scales, using different tools and approaches.”
Some projects examine biodiversity across continents; many are global analyses conducted in collaboration with Prof. Shai Meiri of Tel Aviv University, investigating broad ecological patterns to improve conservation planning worldwide. Others focus much closer to home.
The Hula painted frog, once considered a symbol of irreversible extinction, has become the focus of an ongoing collaboration between Roll, Prof. Eli Geffen of Tel Aviv University, and Sarig Gafny of Ruppin Academic Center, working together to understand how the tiny population survived and what can be done to secure its future.
Growing up in the Carmel mountains, an early love of nature eventually found scientific direction during Roll’s undergraduate studies at Tel Aviv University. “I first came across what we call the biodiversity crisis in my very first Ecology 101 lecture,” he recalled. “The love of nature was already there, but this guided me toward conservation biology.”
He went on to complete a master’s degree researching invasive species before earning a doctorate in spatial ecology, studying how the distribution of species across landscapes can improve efforts to protect those at risk. A postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford expanded that work further, combining ecology, geography, and large-scale biodiversity research before he joined Ben-Gurion University eight years ago.
“If I wanted to give a headline for my lab,” he said, “it would be conservation biology and biodiversity.”
Then he offered a slightly longer version. “How can knowledge of the natural world, across scales, and our interactions with it help us better protect it for the 21st century and beyond?”
Indeed, rather than looking only at animals or ecosystems, Roll has begun examining something less obvious: people. More specifically, the digital traces people leave behind every day – search engines, social media, online photographs, and countless other digital activities create an enormous archive of human behavior.
Most of it has nothing to do with wildlife, but because billions of interactions take place every day, even a small fraction can reveal how people experience the natural world.
Understanding people, Roll argued, is becoming just as important as understanding wildlife. Conservation has long relied on field observations, ecological surveys, and years of patient data collection – methods that remain indispensable, but they can only reach so far.
“Many people are doing similar things globally,” he said of this emerging field, “but it’s still a fairly novel approach.” The novelty lies not in replacing traditional ecology, but in complementing it.
Researchers can ask people directly about their attitudes toward nature through surveys, but digital information offers a much broader picture. Millions of anonymous searches, photographs, and online interactions can reveal changing patterns in how societies value landscapes, animals, and protected areas.
“People can mock the fact that I’m reading after people tweet,” Roll laughed, “but at the end of the day, if over a very large span of interactions we can gain understanding that otherwise would have been impossible, I think that matters. We want to protect the planet for both people and nature. If people are our main constituents, we want to know what they want.”
That philosophy extends well beyond academic curiosity.
Much of Roll’s work is intended to inform real-world conservation policy, both in Israel and internationally. His laboratory collaborates with governmental and non-governmental organizations responsible for protecting biodiversity, helping translate scientific findings into practical management decisions.
“We definitely try to make our knowledge matter,” he said. Among those partners is the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which has worked closely with Roll’s team on conservation projects.
“There is a project now that we are advancing together with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority,” he said. “They’re really pushing to get our results as quickly as possible because people in the higher echelons of the organization are really eager for the results.”
For a conservation scientist, it is an encouraging sign that research is reaching the people responsible for protecting Israel’s natural heritage. Still, applying science is rarely straightforward. Environmental protection requires long-term planning, since conservation biology operates on its own timeline.
Species decline gradually; habitats disappear over decades. The consequences of decisions made today may not fully reveal themselves for generations.
“We’re trying to protect this planet against our influences on it,” Roll said, yet he refuses to describe the situation as hopeless. Instead, he points to a growing community of researchers, policymakers, and conservation professionals working to ensure that scientific knowledge informs environmental decision-making.
“We have good people in academia, outside academia, in government, in governmental organizations, and in non-governmental organizations that are really trying to make knowledge and insight lead toward applied actions,” he said. “In some cases we do work well. In some cases, it can be a struggle.”
When asked to summarize his work in a single sentence, Roll hesitated, only to return to the idea that has guided his career since that first ecology lecture years ago: “How can knowledge of the natural world across scales, and our interactions with it, help us better protect it for the 21st century and beyond?”
For all the sophisticated tools now available to conservation scientists, Roll’s conviction, formed in a university classroom, is that scientific knowledge can help protect the extraordinary diversity of life before more of it is lost. And every so often, that work offers an unexpected reward. A photograph arrives. A phone call changes the day’s lesson. Champagne glasses are raised.
For scientists accustomed to documenting loss, those moments are rare enough to become unforgettable.
“They have potentially rediscovered the species,” Roll said.
The rediscovery of the Hula painted frog did not erase decades of ecological damage, nor did it guarantee the species’ future. What it did was demonstrate something conservation scientists rarely witness: that extinction is not always the final chapter.
This article was written in cooperation with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The Environment and Climate Change portal is produced in cooperation with the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Jerusalem Post maintains all editorial decisions related to the content.
