The Barbara municipality launched a new environmental initiative to free Lebanese Partridge to nature. Birds don’t belong in cages or in our homes, and the Barbara municipality is proving that a lot can be done to protect the wild birds. The event witnessed the attendance of SPNL advisor, Ornithologist Dr. Ghassan Jaradi, and Dr. Manal Nader from the Institute of the Environment University of Balamand.
The chukar partridge is a Eurasian upland gamebird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. It has been considered to form a superspecies complex along with the rock partridge. The species has been introduced into many other places and feral populations have established themselves in parts of North America and New Zealand. This partridge has its native range in Asia, including Lebanon.
This species is relatively unaffected by hunting or loss of habitat. Its numbers are largely affected by weather patterns during the breeding season. The release of captive stock in some parts of southern Europe can threaten native populations of rock partridge and red-legged partridge with which they may hybridize.
