★ Animals looking for a home

Animals looking for a home

Millions of migratory birds, especially eagles, honey buzzards, sparrow hawks and other birds of prey, but also swallows and songbirds are illegally hunted on their migration routes every year. While songbirds are usually caught and eaten with nets or locked in cages and sold as warbling pets, birds of prey end up as stuffed trophies. Or they are shot down just for the pleasure of the hunt. This happens in some countries around the Mediterranean, but especially in Lebanon. Since all migratory birds need upwinds on their long journeys, they never fly over the sea and never over deserts. 

In Lebanon, therefore, they have only one narrow corridor for air traffic between the Mediterranean and the Syrian desert - the Lebanese mountains. That is where the poachers wait. The Lebanese government's ban does not impress the illegal hunters. Bird conservationists of many countries, led by the "Committee against Bird Murder" from Bonn, have been fighting against it since 2017. They patrol the bottlenecks and hot spots of the bird migration in order to track down the poachers - and hand them over to the police.