By Nabih Bulos

The bird hunters stepped nonchalantly over plastic bottles,
wrappers and other detritus, unconcerned by the noise they made as they
patrolled this shabby-looking section of Lebanon’s coastline. But,
save for the occasional passenger jet lumbering out of Beirut’s
international airport a mere 500 feet away, the sky above the Costa
Brava landfill was empty. “Not a bird … not a single one,” boasted one hunter. His
words marked the end of the third workday for Lebanon’s state-appointed
“bird repellers” — the government’s answer to a months-long trash
crisis in this capital by the sea. 

The problem came to a head this month when local media
outlet LBC reported a passenger plane from Lebanon’s national carrier,
Middle East Airlines, had almost slammed into a flock of seagulls
seconds after it landed on  Beirut-Rafic Hariri International
Airport’s west runway.   “Today we face an emergency,
there is a danger posed to civil aviation movement by the
birds,” Lebanon Transport Minister Yousef Fenianos said in a press
briefing. “Thank God, up until now, the flights have not encountered any
real danger.”

The birds have been gathering in steadily
increasing numbers since March,  when authorities opened a controversial
landfill in the Costa Brava, despite warnings by civil society groups,
environmentalists and the local pilots’ union of the dangers of
establishing such a site so close to the airport. A number of
international civil aviation organizations stipulate dumps should be
placed more than five miles away from runways.

The city has experienced garbage woes tied to the mid-2015
closure of Beirut’s main dump following 17 years of operation. Mountains
of rubbish appear on the street.

A processing facility
that was expected for Costa Brava within months of its opening
remains nowhere in sight. The trash has piled up 30 feet high at times,
presenting an irresistible feeding area for birds.

The
smell also provides a pungent welcome for new arrivals to the country.
One blogger likened the stench to that “of a million rotten eggs.”

“The
birds were like a cloud over here a few days ago. Hundreds of them.
More like thousands,” a soldier patrolling the area said recently.
He declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to
the media.

The government this month sought to enact a
series of measures to improve safety for flights. Among the measures
that got underway was the installation of devices that emit the sounds
of birds of prey and are supposed to keep away seagulls. Another tactic,
the bird hunters, were brought in to obtain more immediate results.

Men
equipped with shotguns and a seemingly endless supply of Rio, Prima and
Foxy 12-gauge birdshot shells began to show up at Costa Brava, engaging
in a culling which environmentalists condemned as a massacre — and a
violation of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian
Migratory Waterbirds, which the government signed in 2002. 

Many
people took to social media to upload jarring images of dead birds
collected in a bloody heap on the sand, or of hunters marveling at the
wing span of a seagull they had shot down. 

“This time of
the year, it’s not just the local seabirds and seagulls that
congregate, but also migratory birds that come from Europe and Asia to
the Mediterranean and especially to Lebanon,” said Asaad Serhal,
director of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, which
runs a campaign to save seagulls in the country. 

“In
pictures we’ve seen … the shooters have killed Dalmatian pelicans,
comorants, terns and sandpipers,” said Serhal, who called it
unacceptable for authorities and others to sanction the killing of
birds. “They’re asking people to break the law and start shooting…. And
they’re sitting near the airport and a highway, shooting at every bird
that flies.”

On social media, some people have taken a
more lighthearted approach to the problem, uploading images of runways
with scarecrows. One person suggested broadcasting Lebanese politicians’
speeches via loudspeakers, which, he said, would “scare the birds to
emigrate from Lebanon and never return.”

Middle East
Airlines Chairman Mohammad Hout asked people to choose between seagulls
and “the birds of MEA,” according to local media outlets, while touting
the company’s environmental bona fides and insisting that passenger
safety comes first. 

Meanwhile, the country’s environment
minister, Tarek Khatib, challenged the public to come up with a “more
appropriate solution and scientific alternative.” 

Many activists and observers said a shooting spree against the country’s avian population was a bad idea. 

“We
can’t call the improvisatory measures by the government to be
solutions, because solutions have clear guidelines according to airport
safety parameters,” said Bassam Kantar, managing editor of Green Area,
an environmental media organization. 

“Unfortunately, the
government was satisfied with sending unlicensed hunters to shoot
seagulls without a preset plan to specify what they’re shooting and
why.” 

Elie Fares, creator of the State of Mind 13 blog, wrote that killing birds was unlikely to help solve the problem.  

“To
put it bluntly, how ridiculous, shortsighted and utterly silly is our
government to think that killing the birds is a fix to the problem?” he
wrote. “The thing about those birds is that they will keep coming, no
matter how many of them you kill, because of that landfill whose
existence you’re trying to ignore.”