Recent Attacks on Lebanon Undermine Conservation Efforts

27 July 2006

The now deserted gate of Al Shouf Reserve

Nizar Hani Scientific Coordinator of the largest Reserve in Lebanon, Al Shouf Cedar Biosphere Reserve, stands idle as he watches ten years of arduous conservation work crumble right in front of his eyes in light of the recent Israeli offensive on the country.
“We lost complete control of the situation,” Hani said. “It’s normal I guess, this is war.”
The control Hani is referring to is the capacity to protect some of the few remaining cedar trees in Lebanon, of the famous specie Cedrus libani and the only ones in the southern parts of the country. “Al Shouf Cedar forest also houses 32 species of wild mammals, twelve of which are globally threatened, 200 species of birds, and 400 species of plants, 30 of which are medicinal and 48 endemic.
This protection Hani and his colleagues cultivated over the years by knitting a close relationship with the communities living around the reserve as well as building carefully-studied programs that have low-impact on the recently announced Biosphere-Reserve and provide alternatives to hunting and grazing as income-generating activities. The managers of the reserve, Al Shouf Cedar Society, were striving to reach a level of financial self-sufficiency for the Reserve especially given that international funding for conservation is dwindling.
Forty per cent of the Al Shouf Cedar Reserve income comes from the Ecotourism and Rural Development Programs that were developed by the management team with the aim of reaching self-sufficiency and forging ties between the protected area and the people living around it. The advent of this war undermined both programs.
“We were expecting the number of visitors this summer to break the record of all previous years,” Hani said. “Everything was indicating to this including the number of people who arrived in June and the reservations of July and August. We were going to reap the fruits of what we plowed over so many years.”
The number of visitors to the Reserve grew slowly since the 162 square kilometer habitat of one of the oldest documented forests in history opened its gates in 1996 from 10,000 per year to reach 28,000 in 2004.
“The first blow to the advance of the Reserve’s growing tourism potential came after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri last year in February and now this,” Hani said.

Al Shouf Reserve before the war

The Rural Development program, which raises income for more than fifty families living around the reserve from hand-made naturally process foods like jams, honey, and distilled rose water, was equally affected as the number of tourists and hence consumers of such products declined. This program raised 50 million Lebanese pounds for these families last year only.
But the Reserve, which is also an Important Bird Area (IBA), suffered more than this, according to Hani who still patrols the reserve from time to time despite the great risk entailed.
“Israeli aircrafts are constantly roving in the sky and they don’t hesitate to shoot at any moving vehicle,” he said.
So like the civilians living around its southern and Bekaa borders, the reserve and its resident population of mammals, birds, reptiles and plants were not spared from Israeli bombs.
“It was bombed three times, and the continuous shelling targeting the highways linking Lebanon to Syria is only 100 meters away from the Reserve,” Hani said.
But the coordinator’s greatest concern is the looming chaos from feeling civilian targets and refugees.
“People are sometimes desperately running away from the shelling taking shelter anywhere they can especially those who find themselves attacked on the road,” Hani said. “Pretty soon we won’t be able to keep the gates closed.”
“The wildlife of the forest is already stressed from direct attacks, the very loud sounds of shelling and military airplanes and the air pollution resulting from the explosions,” he added.
Furthermore, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, also an IUCN member, had revived the Hima system, a traditional form of protected area management that was practiced for hundreds of years in the Arab world, through establishing a Bird Reserve in South Lebanon two years ago. The site became well known as “Hima Ebel es Saqi” and as the first community driven conservation effort in a forested area to be revived under the traditional Hima system.
The site, which was declared by experts in BirdLife International as a bottleneck area for migrating birds and an IBA, is today at the center of attacks.
In its opening ceremony in 2004, the United Nations Secretary General Representative for South Lebanon back then Staffan De Mistura said “I hope from now on that we will only see and hear birds not war planes in the sky of south of Lebanon.”
But his wishes seem to have fallen apart today as war planes and bombs have replaced and disrupted birds’ migration. 

For more information on Al Shouf

You can consult: http://www.shoufcedar.org
Or contact:  arzshouf@cyberia.net.lb or hala.kilani@iucn.org