A lot of people in Lebanon have a hobby, they like to kill birds. That’s not very weird, a lot of people around the world like to go hunting.  The only problem in Lebanon is that Lebanese don’t have a limit. Normal people feel something is weird when they go to picnic in the mountains and sit on a carpet of multicolored empty rifle rounds but in Lebanon people finish eating, take the rifle out of the car and start hunting! When they return home in the evening they complain that they weren’t able to catch a lot of birds this time and that no single bird passed over their heads. I wonder why!

People hunt birds in every country in the world, the only difference is that in normal countries the hunting is controlled, people are only allowed to kill a certain amount of birds from X specie and if they are caught with more birds they face heavy fines and prison.

In Lebanon we have laws but we have no one to apply them, the police never stops anyone, and even if they do they just take the bird and the riffle and set him free. The ministers that are supposed to apply the law can sometime be hunters (Sleiman Frangieh was minister of interior) and the minister of environments are usually given to people for political reasons (That’s were Wi2am Wahab started his bright political career!).

Birds migrate so when we kill birds we are not just killing Lebanese ones we are affecting the earth, something must be done about this! I am not asking them to stop hunting, all what they should do is educate hunters and control them like any normal country in the world does!

Still life with hunting equipment and dead birds
1668 Oil on canvas, 68 cm x 54 cm
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

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