Ajloun

Ajloun Nature Reserve was established in 1987 in northern Jordan, in the hills near the town of the same name, and at barely 13 km² it is one of the smallest protected areas in the country.

It protects a fragment of Mediterranean woodland of Palestine oak, Aleppo oak, pistachio and eastern strawberry tree, a formation that once covered much of the uplands of the Levant and that today survives in small patches after millennia of felling, grazing and agricultural expansion. That woodland is the southern extreme of Mediterranean vegetation in the region.

The reserve has served as the base for the reintroduction of the roe deer, extinct in Jordan by the mid-twentieth century, with a captive breeding and release programme begun in the 1980s. Its management model, run by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, has emphasised generating local employment: workshops making soap, ceramics and food products run by women from the surrounding villages fund part of the conservation work and have been cited as an example of linking protection with community development in the Middle East.