Palestine Museum of Natural History

The Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH; ) is a natural history museum in Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine. Founded in 2013, it opened to the public in 2017. The museum collections focus on botany, zoology and entomology. The goals of the museum include research, collecting and education to record and amplify the importance of Palestine's biodiversity and environmental heritage.

Location It is part of Bethlehem University and is closely linked to the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability. As of 2019 it had 10 full-time staff, both Palestinian and Israeli. The museum also features a botanic garden, a wildlife rehabilitation centre, and an aviary. The museum also runs educational programs for children.

History The museum opened to the public on 12 April 2017 and is the first of its kind in Palestine. Its collection began to be established in 2014 by Mazin Qumsiyeh, who many years previously had recognised the need for an archive of Palestinian biodiversity and research programmes to understand its significance. The initial foundation costs were supported by Mazin and Jesse Qumsiyeh and Bethlehem University: with $250,000 donation from the former, supported by $450,000 by the latter.

Collections and research Building a collection of Palestine's biodiversity is a core aim of the museum, and field-based research has assembled the collection. One project collected ten species of freshwater snails from Palestine, which were accession into the museum collection.Handal, Elias, Zuhair Amr, and Mazin Qumsiyeh. "Some records of freshwater snail from the Occupied Palestinian territories." (2015). The freshwater mollusca collection expanded and now includes the first record of Planorbella duryi, an invasive species in Palestine, from the museum's own pond. Another research programme recorded the biodiversity and unique species at the protected site of Wadi Qana, the only known site of Pelobates syriacus in the West Bank.

The entomological collection includes Cetoniinae species from the occupied West Bank,Handal, Elias N., and Z. Amr. "Localities of flower chafers (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae) in the Palestinian territories (West Bank)." Jordan J. Biol. Sci 11 (2018): 389-393. as well as building a collection of 340 grasshopper and locust species, a teratological example of Nezara viridula from the museum garden,Handal, Elias N. "A Teratological Record of the Southern Green Stink Bug Nezara viridula (Hemiptera, Heteroptera, Pentatomidae) from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank)." Jordan Journal of Natural History 8 (2021): 45-46. and the first Palestinian record of the invasive species Cacyreus marshalli.Handal, Elias Nabil. "The Geranium Bronze Butterfly, Cacyreus marshalli (Butler, 1898)(Lycaenidae: Lepidoptera), A New Invasive Species and Additional Records to the Butterfly Fauna of the Palestinian Territories-West Bank." Jordan Journal of Natural History 9 (2022): 2. Another find from the museum garden is the first record of a "bat ensnared by a plant in the Arab world". The bat, Pipistrellus kuhlii, was caught in Picris altissima L. Delile.Handal, Elias N., and Mazin B. Qumsiyeh. "The First Record of a Bat Found Ensnared by a Plant in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

The collection also includes geology, with a discrete assemblage of molluscan and echinoderm fossils collected at Beit Ummar.Al-Harithi, Taleb, Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, and Elias N. Handal. "Macrofaunal Fossil Assemblage from Beit Ummar, Hebron, Palestine." Jordan Journal of Natural History: 53. The botany collection includes examples of Orchidaceae, and macrofungi in the museum's herbarium collection.Thaler, Maximus Theresa, Aysha Al-Wahsh, Alea Meuser, Alyssa Rooks, and Mazin Qumsiyeh. "Macrofungi from the Hebron and Jerusalem Hills of Palestine." (2020). One vertebrate species collected is an unusual specimen of Heremites vittata.Handal, Elias, and Apostolos Christopoulos. "Hindlimb malformation in the skink Heremites vittata Olivier, 1804 from Palestine (West Bank)." Herpetology Notes 15 (2022): 849-852.

Museum biologist, Mohammed Abusarhan, describes the PMNH's work as: The museum has conducted research on the impact on biodiversity of Israeli settlement and the subsequent effects of pollution associated with this expansion. One study examined changes to the diet of eagle owls locally, which suggested a decrease in biodiversity in the region.

As of 2019, the museum was home to over 260 plant specimens, and had just opened an exhibition, funded by the British Council, on collecting Palestinian agricultural heritage through objects and oral histories. Other cultural research undertaken by the museum includes changes in traditional knowledge of wild plants in Artas.

The museum itself has also been the subject of research examining the role of botanic gardens as sites of nation-building and resistance.

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Palestine Museum of Natural History

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