What is a country without its natural heritage? What is a natural heritage without its own beautiful endemic species?
As The Friends of Nature, we believe in the crucial importance of preserving our countries beloved native species. Our concerns were supported by The Critical ecosystem partnership funds CEPF and led into a project called: “Protection of Lebanese endemic flora through community engagement “
Our efforts were focused on four regions in Lebanon “ jabal moussa , Mt Kneisse , Mt Makmel , and Horsh Ehden ”. For two consecutive years our team scanned the four regions searching for rare specimens. Despite all the difficulties encountered in all the sectors in 2019-2020 FON succeeded in finding the most mesmerizing species in the most intriguing locations . Our target endemics were “Peonia kesrouanensis, cyclamen libanoticum , Salvia peyronii , Erica sicula , Allium makmelianum , Allium kneiseum ,hieracium kneiseum Myopordon pulchellum , Senecio exilis, and many others …throughout our explorations other interesting plants occurred our ways , the respective data was taken into consideration as a new clue for following researches. Our project wasn’t only field based, we also conducted many training sessions for the communities in our targeted locations to explain the importance of this natural heritage and the necessity to protect mother nature in all of its aspects.
Our next step would be to protect these species through protected reserves alongside to keep spreading awareness in all of the Lebanese territories in order to shed the light on the importance of our precious countries natural wealth. Please enjoy the beautiful photographs taken by our team throughout our amazing journey. Don’t forget to check our social media accounts to keep up with us. We also invite you to check our YouTube channel for beautiful videos on field.