Ask any hiker, nature enthusiast or avid camper for the best spots to visit in Lebanon this summer and Jannet Chouwen will be among the first suggestions made.
Visit the website of Lebanon’s tourism ministry and you’ll also find Jannet Chouwen there.
Listen to the news, and it’ll say the area has now been classified as part of Jabal Moussa’s nature reserve. [link]
But go there yourself and you’ll find a whole new story.
After a very challenging 40 minute hike, I was thrilled to finally reach my destination, only to find scattered garbage almost everywhere. From broken glass bottles, to numerous plastic bags, the varieties are endless but the results are one: your morale will be broken.
Here are two photos taken from exactly the same location. All I did was pan the camera from right to left.
The solid plastics floating in the water only accumulated to one side when the morning breeze worked up the current.
I almost went in myself to clean up what I can, but then reality struck, I had no equipment. Determined not to give up, I thought the best way to go about this was to come up with a few points that may solve the problem once and for all.
Bigger is better:
- Install a large sign at the entrance and by large I mean monumental. The sign should read as follows:
“You are now about to enter a nature reserve. You are therefore responsible for your own protection and the protection of wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research.”
Don’t ask, threaten:
- Visitors are required to report all environmental misconduct including but not limited to: Littering, unattended campfires, hunting, logging etc.
- Failure to abide by the above rules and regulations will result in a fine and possible prosecution.
The above-listed “golden rules” are sure to instill some respect into the hearts and minds of those who choose to enter the area, which by all means must be protected, because from the looks of it, the smaller signs installed at the location have little to no effect on those who enter carrying portable barbeques and shishas.
As for those collecting money at the entrance set to go towards cleaning up the reserve, below are a few words.
1. Call for a resident ranger. Chouwen must be protected from illegal logging, pollution, arson and many other threats. An official ranger is the sole designated authority trained by the ministry of environment and agriculture ministry to follow up on such cases and on the well-being of nature reserves nationwide.
2. Lay off animal powered delivery! People who hire donkeys, made available at the entrance, to move in their belongings to the camp site deserve a special place in hell. Not only do they pay to have unnecessary goods taken in to the camp site, but they fail to have their garbage taken out. The donkeys are also massively overloaded and overworked. Animal welfare organizations, please take note.
3. Raising entrance fees will not solve the problem, only education and a bit of intimidation will. Also, ban shishas and portable barbeques for heaven’s sake!
Schizophrenia is defined as a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and we, the Lebanese have mastered all of the above.
It’s a sad reality that I have come to realize in this country. A reality where environmental activism is deemed futile and unnecessary but shishas are not; a reality where money is seen more valuable than the little nature we have left, where intimidation and a hands-on-throat approach are the sole means to “educating” a population, a reality where the majority deems those capable as society’s out-of-touch hippies.
And therein lays the tragedy, because while the majority did leave its trash behind, those hippies were the only ones making an effort to clean up all that they could, using their hands, feet and tools found on site. This is what I call Lebanese schizophrenia, where the select few deemed as “out of touch with reality” are the ones compensating for the indolence of the majority.