A symposium, bicycles and kites in the form of flying birds … a tribute to the beginning of the bird migration season

Coinciding with the start of the migration season over Lebanon, coming from Europe towards Africa….The Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL) and the Middle East Center for Sustainable Hunting MECSH held, on Saturday, 5 September 2020, educational and sports-focused activity at the Homat al Hima International Center (HHIC) in Khirbet Kanafar – West Bekaa with the support of international and local partners including Birdlife international, the MSB project, the GEF, the UNDP, the Litani River Authority and Sayd magazine.

The activity included a seminar on the importance of bird migration and the need to combat excessive hunting, and to promote the culture of the new generation in understanding the benefits of birds to biodiversity.

The activity also included presenting certificates of thanks and appreciation to hunters and conservationists from the Bekaa who made efforts to protect the bird flyway over the western Bekaa region (the mayor of Ain Zibdah Charbel Nohra – head of the hunting legends group Zafer Nakhlawi – the hunter Adel Najjar).

The activity also included presenting paper planes similar to flying birds to the children of hunters as a message of love and safety that they should carry from today to the future to secure the path for the migration of birds without harm.

A group of Homat al Hima (Hima protectors) in the western Bekaa also participated in the activity and set out from HHIC center on bicycles towards the water refining pools at the Litani River Authority, in a visit confirming the joint cooperation to secure an unpolluted and healthy path for the migration of birds over the area.

– The speakers at the seminar included Adonis Al-Khatib, President of the Middle East Center for Sustainable Hunting, director of the responsible hunting file at the Society for the Protection of Nature, and the Director of the International Hima Hama Center HHIC, Wasim Al-Khatib.

Certificates of thanks and appreciation were presented to the hunters, by hunter SHirine Bou Raffoul, the head of the anti-poaching unit of the Middle East Center for Sustainable Hunting and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon.