lack of means
Faced with this situation, various donors -mostly Lebanese from the diaspora, originally from Ainata- are financing a team of forest agents.
Since the night patrols began, “not a single case of illegal logging has been found,” says Samir Rahmé, satisfied.
The inhabitants point out that when a tree is felled illegally it no longer grows back.
But not all municipalities have the luxury of help hiring forest guards, even on a temporary basis.
“The budget that the state gives us has become derisory,” says Ghassan Geagea, mayor of Barqa, a neighboring town.
Although he considers asking the residents to finance the patrols, the mayor doubts whether they would be really effective “given the scope of the phenomenon.”
The violators act in the high areas, far from Barqa. Several thousand-year-old junipers disappeared there.
In Lebanon, the forest area – already corroded by increasing urbanization and fires – covers 13% of the territory, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
In order for the inhabitants to warm themselves in winter, only the pruning of “sick” trees is authorized, with the supervision of the mayor’s office.
“Five hundred years”
Paul Abi Rached, president of the NGO Earth Lebanon, recently warned about the increase in “ecological massacres”, especially the felling of juniper trees, in Lebanon.
According to the Ministry of the Environment, the country is home to the largest forests in the Middle East of this ancient tree, as well as forests of pine, oak, cedar and fir.
The juniper is “one of the only trees that can grow at high altitudes and retain snow for water to infiltrate into groundwater tablessays Abi Rached.
But for a few years, its wood has been increasingly coveted by smugglers who, locals suspect, later sell it to Lebanon and Syria.
“If we don’t stop the felling of the juniper, we are heading towards a shortage of water and drought,” he warns.
And even more so if one takes into account that this tree grows “very slowly”, explains Youssef Tawk, a 68-year-old man from Becharre, in northern Lebanon. “Outside the reserves, it takes 500 years for it to take the form of a tree,” he explains.
“Cutting down this tree is a crime. For me, it’s like killing a man,” adds Tawk, a doctor by profession and founder of an environmental protection organization.
For her part, Dany Geagea has been working against the felling of juniper in her village for more than 20 years.
He has created an NGO and a reserve near Ainata where he has planted some 30,000 junipers.
“Illegal logging is not something new, what is is that now it is done in an organized way,” says the 46-year-old activist, who is not related to the mayor of Barqa.
And the few times that criminals are arrested, they end up “quickly released,” he laments.
“That’s Lebanon… Even justice is politicized.”