Leave Only Your Footsteps
As the largest natural reserve in Lebanon, Shouf’s Cedar Forest gets special attention from local authorities, who want to preserve its unspoilt nature while promoting it as an ecotourism destination.
Leave Only Your Footsteps
As the largest natural reserve in Lebanon, Shouf’s Cedar Forest gets special attention from local authorities, who want to preserve its unspoilt nature while promoting it as an ecotourism destination.
At the Shouf Cedar reserve, visitors can walk for hours and hours without encountering a single concrete structure or pile of garbage – a rare pleasure in Lebanon, a country where urban sprawl threatens even remote mountain villages.
The local authorities have been making efforts to preserve this large forest, rich in pine, oak and cedar trees, some of which are thousands of years old. Their main concern has been to protect the forest from fires, especially arson.
“Forest fires are the biggest threat,” said Nizar Hani, an official at the Shouf reserve, recalling one which had erupted at the eastern end of the forest and that required the help of the army to quell it. The authorities, he said, lacked specialised equipments, especially helicopters, to deal with forest fires.
Unlike in other nature spots in the country where people tend to picnic and leave litter, at the Shouf reserve officials strictly prohibit visitors from entering with food and leaving “anything that could damage the natural beauty of the site”, said Hani.
“Our motto is: leave only the marks of your footsteps,” the official said, adding that visitors are usually escorted by guides who know the forest well.
The Shouf Cedar reserve, in the mountains south of Beirut and extending east towards the Bekaa valley, covers an area of around 500 square kilometres and was deemed a protected area by the state in 1996. In 2005, it was designated a biosphere reserve by the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO.
The reserve’s importance stems from its size, the nature of the millennial cedar trees it contains and its biological diversity. It is also an important station for migratory birds. The reserve harbours today an artificial water expanse that attracts wild birds and is used for observing and studying them.
A project for creating more of these ponds is being studied but needs funding of 40-50,000 US dollars.
But the first goal set by the reserve’s officials continues to be the promotion of a site as an eco-tourism attraction where visitors, especially young people, can learn about the importance of caring for the environment.
“We organise tours for school students to raise their awareness about living in harmony with nature and respecting it,” said Hani. The reserve contains a number of “educational tracks” with signs that explain the biodiversity of the forest.
The number of visitors of the natural reserve reached its peak in 2004 with 28,000 guests entering the forest, according to the reserve’s official records. But the number of visitors has declined since then because of the security situation in Lebanon, said Hani, adding that visitor numbers are now increasing again.
In addition to being a major natural attraction, the reserve’s staff have been promoting traditional food produced by villagers around the site.
After a tour in the cedar forest, visitors can buy fig and pear jams, honey and other products made by 40 women from the area of Shouf. This constitutes an important additional source of income to many rural families, said Hani.
