A huge fire that destroyed thousands of trees in north Lebanon surged Wednesday and approached residential areas, prompting the government to consider asking for British assistance battling the blaze. Cyprus agreed to send Lebanon a helicopter to assist the Army in putting out the fire.   Mayor of Sfira Hussein Harmoush said a halt in firefighting operations allowed the fire to flare Wednesday morning. ...

A Mediterranean cruise might not sound like a typical day in the life of a scientist, but for researchers studying the effects of human activity on the environment, the sea has become an extension of their laboratory. For the millions of people who live along the Mediterranean coast – and the millions more who visit every year – the sea is a source of pleasure, leisure, food and income. What has not been ap ...

Kivalina is home to about 400 Inupiat people. Scientists say the tiny Alaskan village is falling prey to the effects of climate change — and might be uninhabitable within the next 10 years. The northwestern Alaskan village of Kivalina is perched on a remote and narrow strip of sand next to the frigid waters of the Chukchi sea. Its 400 residents are the descendants of an Inupiat tribe.   And in just 10 ...

Climate change has struck again. This time, it's impacting forests in Argentina. New research has revealed that increases in precipitation and changes in vegetative structure in these forests have led to increased parasitism of young nesting birds by fly larvae. This is bad news for the diversity of these avian species. In temperate and tropical areas of the Americas, wild bird chicks are at the mercy of pa ...

The Biodiversity Program (BP) at the Institute of Environment (IOE), University of Balamand (UOB) organized a workshop entitled “Research on managing in wildfire risk in Lebanon” on the 26 June 2013 at Hotel Holiday Inn, Dunes – Beirut. This workshop came within the framework of a new project entitled: “towards a better management of wild land-Urban interface in Lebanon: gaining from the US experience”: man ...

Caretaker Environment Minister Nazem Khoury announced Thursday that the Harissa Mountain area in Jounieh would be converted into a nature reserve in cooperation with the Maronite Patriarchate and the Jounieh Municipality. “The reserve will be a major resource, not just for the residents of Kesrouan, but also for all Lebanese,” he said. The decision was announced after Khoury, caretaker Information Minister ...

Less than an hour drive from chaotic Beirut a hidden ecological sanctuary offers peace of mind, body and soul. The valley that has seen men and women flee the atrocities of war from the Ottoman Empire, to the conflict of 1860, and then the massacres of 1983, has now become a haven of peace; a transitory refuge, not to hide in any more but to expand. It is in this preserved lush historical mountain of the Ch ...

Assad Adel Serhal, Director General of Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, SPNL (BirdLife Partner in Lebanon) has more than 25 years experience in the development and management of Protected Areas in Lebanon. Under his direction SPNL has initiated eight Himas (community-based protected areas) in Lebanon, and he helped found the Hima Fund. Assad Serhal is the current chair of the BirdLife Middle ...

Four companies have applied for a tender to build a wind-power farm with a capacity of between 50 and 100 MW, the Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW) said. The deadline to apply for the tender was on June 25. One of the applicants is a joint venture between Hawa Akkar, a Lebanese firm, Greece-based Construction Contractors Company (CCC), and China-based wind turbine manufacturer, Goldwind. Albert Khoury, Ch ...

More than 140 countries have agreed on a set of legally binding measures to curb mercury pollution, at UN talks. Delegates in Geneva approved measures to control the use of the highly toxic metal in order to reduce the amount of mercury released into the environment. Mercury can produce a range of adverse human health effects, including permanent damage to the nervous system. The UN recently published data ...