Hunters in Lebanon use automatic rifles to gun down dozens of rare birds ‘for fun’

Issued on: 17/04/2023 – 15:33Modified: 17/04/2023 – 15:36

Videos filmed in the Akkar region of northern Lebanon show people using “military weapons” to slaughter dozens of rare migratory birds. Our Observers say the weapons included M16s and AK-47 Kalashnikovs. The videos were posted online on April 9 and 10.

‘Some of the birds got wing injuries and will never be able to fly again’

Ghina Nahfawi, who posted these images on Twitter, is an animal rights activist. 

What happened was a massacre. Unfortunately, many people have weapons in Lebanon, even more since the country has collapsed into crisis and chaos. The poachers filmed themselves carrying out the slaughter and posted the videos on TikTok or Facebook, without any shame. They are proud of killing. 

We knew that the birds were going to cross the country on their migration route and we were afraid that they might be killed. We warned the authorities so that they would act, but no one did anything.

Unfortunately, some of the birds got wing injuries and will never be able to fly again.

These animals are really important for our ecosystem. They clean our environment. They cross the globe from one place to another and they link countries together.

These birds were slaughtered right at the end of the spring migration period. At this time of year, migratory birds leave the African continent where they spend the winter and then travel to Europe to nest. Lebanon is part of the route and, each year, millions of birds cross the skies, including storks, pelicans and cranes. 

This isn’t the first time the massacre has happened – people come out and hunt the birds for sport every year during the same migratory season. But this year, the automatic rifles made things much worse.

‘Many birds didn’t survive the automatic gunfire’

Michel Sawan is the president of the Lebanese Association of Migratory Birds. He has been going out into the field daily to try and help injured birds, bringing them to a centre that he’s run since 2009. He says that these poachers are bloodthirsty:

They shoot at anything that flies, big birds or small ones. They shoot at eagles, pelicans, storks and vultures … just for fun. 

These migratory birds aren’t safe to eat because they feed off the carcasses of dead animals. They eat snakes and rodents and drink polluted water that makes them toxic to us humans. 

This year, many birds didn’t survive the automatic gunfire because they release bullets with much more pressure than normal hunting rifles, creating more damage on impact. 

Some of the birds that have been killed are nationally protected species, like cranes, eagles, Egyptian vultures and several other kinds of birds of prey. 

If the slaughter continues like this, twice a year, then we won’t see any more birds in the sky. And I’m not just talking about the Lebanese sky, but also the skies over Europe and Africa.

“We don’t have precise statistics but we think that a hundred birds were killed on Sunday and Monday alone [Editor’s note: April 9 and 10]. Many more were wounded”, says Roger Saad, president of Lebanon’s Association for Bird Conversation, RSAW, and a bird conservation activist. 

Our team reached out to the Lebanese biodiversity conservation group Green Southerners. According to their estimates, “hundreds, even thousands of birds, including protected species like cranes, white storks and many other species are killed each year during their migratory seasons during springtime and early autumn”.

Banned practice 

Bird hunting for sport is widespread in the mountains of Lebanon. While there are laws governing the practice, our Observers say they are often broken, with impunity. 

Under Lebanese law, people banned from hunting migratory birds less than 500 metres from residential zones, as well as during the off-season and without a permit. 

The Ministry of the Environment has called for the prosecution of those behind the recent slaughter.