Hunting migratory birds is illegal in the country, but a series of crises means enforcement is derisory and many birds are being shot ‘just for fun’
Hannah McCarthy in Zgharta, Lebanon. Mon 22 Jul 2024
Shell casings litter a meadow on Mount Terbol in northern Lebanon. The valley below falls along one of the world’s busiest routes for migratory birds. The mountain peak, buffeted by harsh winds, creates a natural corridor that encourages birds fatigued from long journeys between Africa and Eurasia to fly at low altitudes.
Those low-flying birds are easy targets for poachers who live in the mountain communities, says Michel Sawan, director of the Lebanese Association of Migratory Birds (Lamb). “They say: ‘We inherited this culture from our grandfathers,’ and I keep saying: ‘Your grandfathers are and were wrong.’”
Every year, 2.6 million birds are illegally killed as they fly over Lebanese territory, according to BirdLife International. They are shot as they migrate seasonally between Eurasia and Africa, a journey undertaken by about 2 billion birds.
Lebanese law prohibits the hunting of migratory birds, but a weak government in Beirut, a financial crisis, and war along the southern border with Israel mean few resources are devoted to enforcing hunting laws, which often require security personnel to arrest members of their own community.
Birds are a global treasure … they don’t belong to one country – they’re a global responsibility
Of the thousands of birds shot down in this region, most carcasses are not collected or eaten by poachers but simply left on the valley floor – shot “just for fun”, says Sawan. If the birds do not die quickly, they often experience slow, agonising deaths on the ground, as maggots eat their live flesh.
Over the past decade, the old practice of hunting migratory birds has received fuel from 21st-century accelerants: social media and high-accuracy weapons. Many poachers post clips of their kills online, and there are concerns that social media is driving the killing. On TikTok, hunters share videos of storks being shot from the sky, sometimes using military-style weapons. “They massacre birds for likes. If they had nowhere to post these videos, they wouldn’t be shooting these birds,” Sawan says. He has reported the videos but says TikTok contends that the footage is not against its policies. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
Sawan was once a hunter but witnessing a mass killing of storks converted him to wildlife activism. The human toll also disturbs him. Every year he says, someone dies on a hunt. A teenage boy on a motorbike was accidentally shot during a hunt near Zgharta earlier this year, says Sawan, one of whose childhood friends died during a hunt. The activist says he has been shot at seven times by poachers while trying to protect birds.
As he drives along the winding road around Mount Terbol, Sawan slows down, noting the sound of birdsong on a loop. “Can you hear that? It’s abirdcall machine,” says Sawan. “Poachers use them to attract birds.” Moments later, the sound of gunshots rings through the air.
Today, Sawan is waiting to accompany one of the three local anti-poaching units recently assigned to the Mount Terbol area by Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF). The unit fails to show up.
A Lebanese security source, however, says that, despite personnel shortages, poaching is a priority for the ISF and that poachers are arrested and their weapons confiscated. “It’s moral for us to help the migratory birds,” they say.
In recent years, several bird species typically found in desert areas in Africa and the Gulf, including the three-banded plover, the hooded wheatear and the Kurdish wheatear, have been sighted for the first time in Lebanon. This suggests that the climate crisis is affecting the migratory paths of these birds.
Dr Nabegh Ghazal Asswad, a programme manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says: “These species were never reported before at such northerly latitudes … This can mainly be justified through the change in climate patterns where they were driven away from their normal ranges to venture north into new territories.” Rising temperatures can also alter weather systems, including the direction of warm thermal winds and storms, he says, causing birds to deviate from their migration or seek new habitats.
The killing of predatory birds such as the lesser spotted eagle and the sparrowhawk negatively affects Lebanon’s ecosystem, where these birds serve to keep rodents and pests under control. Without these avian predators, farmers are forced to use rat poison to protect their crops.
Fouad Itani, president of the Association for Bird Conservation in Lebanon, says there are “414 bird species recorded in Lebanon, including 48 of high conservation concern, all of which are being shot or trapped in the country”. Stopping poaching is critical to maintaining healthy local and global ecosystems, he says. “Birds play essential roles in controlling pests, pollinating plants, and dispersing seeds, which are crucial for maintaining ecological balance,” Itani says. “The loss of these birds can lead to increased pest populations, reduced pollination and a decline in plant diversity.”
Lamb has called for the Terbol-Zgharta area to be designated “an important bird and biodiversity area” (IBA) by BirdLife International, but so far there has been no funding for research to support that protected status. Ibrahim Khader, the Middle East director for BirdLife International, says Terbol-Zgharta is near an existing IBAand without data demonstrating certain criteria, the area cannot be designated.
On the Mount Terbol road, despite the gunshots in the distance, Sawan doesn’t have time to chase poachers. He is on his way to the village of Jarjour to collect a kestrel for Lamb’s bird shelter. Injured birds are often brought in, and Sawan and his colleague Fadi Habib attempt to save them, sometimes spending hours picking maggots from their bodies. Some birds make a full recovery; others will never fly again and will probably remain at the shelter for the rest of their lives. “This is a burden sometimes,” says Sawan. “The more we have, the more the expenses are.”
The Polish embassy has been supporting Sawan since 2015 and encouraged him to formally establish Lamb as an NGO in 2021. “Birds are a global treasure,” says Przemysław Niesiołowski, the Polish ambassador to Lebanon. “They don’t belong to one country – they’re a global responsibility.” Polish interest in bird conservation in Lebanon was sparked after “disturbing” footage of stork massacres in Lebanon circulated 10 years ago in Poland, where the birds are an unofficial national symbol.
“They’re considered a good-luck charm – if the white stork makes a nest on your house, it will never catch fire,” says Niesiołowski. “They are part of our landscape … When they gather in the fields before moving to the south, then you know that the summer’s over and autumn is coming.”