Lebanon can get over 500 storks migrating over its skies, a sight which is rare in any other country. These birds of prey make their way from Africa to Europe, passing by Lebanon, every year. But instead of reaching Europe, more and more storks are being illegally hunted in Lebanon. The government, needless to say, has done nothing. “Everyone loves these birds,” Axel Hirschfeld, press and operations officer at German-based conservation society the Committee Against Bird Slaughter, told The Daily Star. [..] “Lebanon is like a black hole,” he said with a sigh. “The pictures shocked Europeans,” Paul Abi Rached, founder of T.E.R.R.E. Liban and president of Lebanon Eco Movement, told The Daily Star. “There is a painful cry from the Poles. White storks are not coming home to them.” “In 20 years, is it possible that the government has not been able to control hunting?” Abi Rached asked derisively. In a report prepared in June 2013 titled “Report on the Hunting of Migrant Birds in the Lebanon – Affected Species and Their Conservation Status in the EU,” the Lebanon Eco Movement documented 589 pictures posted on Facebook between January 2011 and March 2013 showing at least 13,164 birds killed by hunters, featuring around 143 different species.
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 20:00:01 +0000
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