Lebanon's Eco-tourism Survives Despite the Violence

Lebanon's eco-tourism has taken the beating for the country's continued instability. The scenic countryside, which in better times was a temptation to all nature lovers, hardly gets its share of tourists nowadays. Earlier, the economy depended on the income from eco-tourism, nurtured the country's damaged environment and cemented national unity in one stroke. But today, after a war, a political crisis and flareups of sectarian violence, Lebanon's brave experiment in eco-tourism is battered and bloodied but defiantly soldiers on.

In the eastern Bekaa region near the Syrian border, financial help from the United States and Europe helped establish a project for encouraging families to come and enjoy the wildlife, staying in local hostels and employing local guides.

Ravaged by hunters, the countryside around the village of Kfar Zabad, which straddles the main migration route for African-Eurasian water fowl, was declared a protected area and now teems with birds, along with wildcats and a few river otters.

"Before, this place was filled with hunters in the afternoon and all you heard was the sound of gunfire," Mayor Qassem Choker says proudly, pointing to fields near the entrance to the village.

"But since the village was designated a protected area in 2004, we can hear the birds chirping again and enjoy our surroundings."

The wildlife has emphatically returned. But since the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri that marked Lebanon's new plunge into turmoil, the tourists have become an endangered species.