Invoking Islamic tradition to save birds
HAMMANA, LEBANON—On
a Saturday in November, a small group of boys in matching royal blue shirts, the uniform of the Scouts of Lebanon, gathered beside their “hideout”: a small pine forest on the edge of town. Their mission: collect as many spent shotgun shells as they could find in the next five minutes.
The task had been assigned to them by two volunteers from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, a conservation organization focused on protecting birds.
Hunting is ubiquitous in Lebanon, which has the 11th-highest rate of smallarms ownership in the world. In a show of hands, nine of the scouts had claimed to own a gun. Two, both 12 years old, said they were allowed to hunt, and 10 more said they wished they were. Angelo, 16, was not among them.
“Some say it’s a sport, but it’s not, it’s a waste of time,” he said. There were other things you could be doing with the hours spent waiting for birds, he added.
Mike, 12, agreed: “I say also it’s a waste of time, because I don’t like to kill birds.”
Assad Serhal, a founder of SPNL, is a reformed hunter. That morning in Hammana, Serhal grew upset as he showed a photograph that had been spreading on social media. Recently, a series of nationwide protests had been calling for the resignation of Lebanon’s political leaders. One of the chants often shouted by protesters was, “All of them means all of them.” The photograph showed the words of the chant, in Arabic, written using the carcasses of songbirds killed by hunters. The phrase was also underlined in birds, twice.
Among the society’s top concerns is protecting the 2.5 billion migratory birds that pass over the country twice a year. During those journeys, 2.6 million migratory birds are shot or trapped illegally, according to BirdLife International; SPNL is that organization’s official partner in Lebanon. As other countries examine why some of their protected birds aren’t returning from migration, Lebanon has come under the spotlight.
Lebanon’s topography is dominated by two long mountain ranges. Various bird migration routes, or flyways, pass through the country; when squeezed between mountains, the routes narrow, forming bottlenecks. The bottlenecks create conditions for satisfying birdwatching and make it easier for organizations like SPNL to conduct bird counts.
But the bottlenecks also serve hunters. At certain points throughout the country, the narrow flyways funnel birds through elevated vantage points from which hunters can get easy shots.
Two decades ago, Serhal was looking at century-old military maps of Lebanon when he noticed something oddly familiar: areas labelled “hima” and town names that included the word. In Arabic, hima can mean refuge, protected area, private pasture or homeland; “Humat al-Hima” (Defenders of the Homeland) is Tunisia’s national anthem. Serhal had known vaguely of the idea, but had no idea that hima had existed in Lebanon.
He discovered that the concept dates back more than 1,000 years, with a mention in the Qur’an. Muhammad had designated certain areas as hima, which meant they were subject to rules about grazing, hunting or even trade. On Serhal’s maps, it turned out, hima signified communal areas.
The word’s appearance gave him an idea: perhaps he could revive its traditional meaning.
Serhal thought that hima might be accepted as a traditional concept; it also would include communities and municipalities in the design of the conservation areas. Hima wouldn’t be just about protecting nature, Serhal said; it would be “nature plus people.” When SPNL helped a community design a local hima, the group suggested additional conservation methods, like banning hunting.
The first hima was established in southern Lebanon in 2004. Today there are 25; they have been given legal status by the government and cover more land than Lebanon’s national parks. Five of the designated hima are also what BirdLife calls “Important Bird Areas,” of which there are 15 in the country. Last year, Serhal was awarded Japan’s Midori Prize for Biodiversity, among the world’s most prestigious awards for conservation work.