Negev tortoise the local population trend is rising. The specific name, "werneri", is in honor of Israeli herpetologist Yehudah L. Werner. Negev tortoise The Negev tortoise ("Testudo werneri") is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is endemic to the Negev Desert in southern Israel. "T. werneri" has been considered to be a subspecies or synonym of Kleinmann's tortoise ("T. kleinmanni" ). Males of "T. werneri" may reach a straight carapace length of . Females grow to be larger, attaining a straight carapace length of (Perälä 2001). "T. werneri" was once found in the Sinai Peninsula but has gone
Negev of the Negev are Jews, while 160,000 or 25% are Bedouin. Of the Bedouin population (a demographic with a semi-nomadic tradition), half live in unrecognized villages, and half live in towns built for them by the Israeli government between the 1960s and 1980s; the largest of these is Rahat. The population of the Negev is expected to reach 1.2 million by 2025. It has been projected that the Beersheba metropolitan area will reach a population of 1 million by 2020, and Arad, Yeruham, and Dimona will triple in size by 2025. Blueprint Negev is a Jewish National Fund project introduced