Saving Lebanon’s Legendary Cedar Trees

Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on efforts to preserve Lebanon’s legendary cedar trees. The cedars have been an important part of life in the region for at least eight thousand years, but they’re vanishing from the landscape. (Photo: Olivier Bezes) Download MP3

Ari Daniel Shapiro produces the podcast One Species at a Time for the Encyclopedia of Life with Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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• Al-Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve
• René Mouawad Foundation Plant Nursery
• Encyclopedia of Life

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KATY CLARK: Even if you’ve never been to Lebanon, you’ve probably heard of the country’s cedar trees. The cedar is the symbol of Lebanon. It’s even emblazoned on the flag. The trees embody strength and longevity since they can live for thousands of years. But forces both very old and very new are threatening Lebanon cedars. Ari Daniel Shapiro has our story.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO:  Lebanon today is a land of traffic jams, bustling shops and apartment blocks climbing slopes once covered by cedar trees. But stands of cedars can still be found if you know where to look.

NIZAR HANI:  Look at this. I would like to have a photo. I took this photo a hundred times before.

SHAPIRO: Nizar Hani stops his car by one of his favorite cedars. The tree is in the Shouf Cedar Reserve in the center of Lebanon. It’s about 25 feet high with a thick trunk and stout limbs that thrust outward. The cedar of Lebanon is an icon in this part of the world and for thousands of years, Hani says, its fragrant wood has been highly prized far and wide.

HANI: Everyone was cutting the cedar trees and transfer the wood through the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, to Egypt, to everywhere. It was a huge work. A long, long, long time ago the area of the cedar forest was 500,000 hectares. Imagine.

SHAPIRO: That’s about half the size of modern day Lebanon. But all of that logging came at a great cost. Today, less than 1% of Lebanon’s original cedar forest remains. Much of that forest is in this reserve, where Hani is the scientific coordinator. It’s a quiet green oasis covering 5% of the country’s area and containing a quarter of its remaining cedars.

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SHAPIRO: [PH] Hassam Hanim is a guide here.

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SHAPIRO: The cedar is not just a slogan for the Lebanese people, Hanim says. It’s our father, our mother, our sister, our brother and our friend. These ties run deep into the past. The cedars of Lebanon are described in the 8,000-year-old Gilgamesh epic and are oftened mentioned in the Bible. But preserving them isn’t just about saving Lebanon’s cultural heritage. Just below Nizar Hani’s feet as he walks through the reserve is a massive watershed. It’s protected in part by the forest.

HANI:  This is the importance of this reserve. Not to just to protect the cedar trees and to protect the birds and whatever, it’s to protect our life. It’s to protect our drinking water.

SHAPIRO: The Lebanese government officially recognizes the value of the cedars. Most of the remaining trees grow on public land where cutting is prohibited. But Nizar Hani believes the government should do more to protect the country’s cedars. Especially with a new menace threatening them. Hani picks up a small brown cedar cone.

HANI: It’s a very, very dry cone. This cone, it will not continue. Now we’re facing a new challenge which is the climate change.

SHAPIRO: Climate change poses many problems. Dry cones, more attacks from insects and a growing risk of forest fires. Then there’s what Hani says may be the biggest problem.

HANI: The life cycle of the cedar seed, they need to be under snow for two months.

SHAPIRO: It’s that winter weather that triggers germination. But warmer temperatures these days mean a shorter winter and fewer saplings. So it’s not enough to just protect the cedars in a reserve like this. Now new trees have to be cradled through the first years of their life. This refrigerated warehouse in the town of Zgharta is run by a local NGO. [PH] Carlos Nakkad is an agricultural engineer.

CARLOS NAKKAD: We are going now to the [INDISCERNIBLE] storage room in order to show you where I put the container of the seeds of cedars.

SHAPIRO: A heavy metal door locks out the summer heat. To produce saplings, Nakkad first has to chill the cedar seeds here for 40 days. The cavernous warehouse smells sweet from the apples he stores in it much of the year. After the seeds germinate, the trees grow at a nearby nursery where Nakkad tends to rows of young cedars. He sells them at cost to environmental clubs, boy and girls scouts, and local governments. More than 5,000 of his trees are planted each year. But planting cedars is only the beginning for Nakkad.

NAKKAD:  I don’t want a man to [INDISCERNIBLE] one tree and take off three others. Or plant them and not irrigated. The big challenge is to [SOUNDS LIKE] concern those trees.

SHAPIRO: Nakkad’s trying to cultivate a broader culture of stewardship for trees and the land in general. It’s tough work in a country without wide environmental consciousness.

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SHAPIRO: Hassam Hanim, the guide at the Shouf Cedar Reserve, faces a similar challenge. He often has to explain why many potentially destructive activities are banned in the reserve.

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SHAPIRO: We face a lot of difficulties, Hanim says, but we started teaching people. We told them this reserve is being protected not from you, but for you. Hanim and his colleagues run educational programs and help local residents produce sustainable forest products. He says the efforts are starting to take root among local residents.

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SHAPIRO: We preserve what we love, Hanim says. We love what we understand. We understand what we learn. And, Hanim says, for the endangered cedars of Lebanon, that learning can’t happen too quickly. For The World, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro, Chouf, Lebanon.

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