“The Yarkon bleak used to be found in most of Israel’s coastal river system, but by the latter half of the 20th century the fish had disappeared from every waterway except the Yarkon River and Tut Stream,” Goren explains, adding that pumping for irrigation purposes had turned many rivers into mere trickles.

Then came a period of extended drought, which culminated in 1999.

“By then, only three small isolated populations survived and the species was on the brink of extinction,” he tells ISRAEL21c.