Up there in Mount Lebanon, a dedicated, faithful sanctuary to saving Lebanese biodiversity, Animal Encounter, an animal shelter located in Aley village that has been active since the early 1990s that could be accredited for saving hundreds of endangered animals and dealing with their critical status after being injured by illegal hunting.

The sanctuary has been aiming for 3 main goals throughout these years:

Medicating animals and rehabilitating their physical and mental health to release them back into the wild

Make the animals breed to increase their number

Raise awareness about the crucial role of animals in the ecological system and lift red flags concerning the illegal hunting and animal black markets.

Dr. Mounir Bou Said has been leading this battle with his wife; he used first to buy animals from the black markets in order to free them again, before realizing that hasn't been much strategic as he was somehow financing black merchants to continue their illegal animal trades, so he decided to establish his animal healing center that he has funded approximately all alone with his wife.

According to Dr. Mounir, saving wildlife isn't motivated by empathy and compassion with animals as much as it is by scientific maturity and realization of the uncontested role that these animals play in the natural cycle that forms our surrounding world.

The birds of prey like falcons, hawks, owls feed on snakes, rodents like rats and insects; hyenas and wolves are considered the cleansers of nature, besides being unoffensive towards people unless provoked, these animals eat all the leftovers and cadavers that won't serve anymore with their bones, if spotted near houses, they'll be surely searching for food in the filth bags, they'll not be willing to attack humans as they're timid animals searching for food with the lesser bothering and cost, and most importantly, these animals play an elementary role in keeping the equilibrium in the animal chain as they hunt wild boars which numbers have increased in the area and have been disturbing farmers by eating their vegetations. Foxes feed on insects, including venomous ones like bees.

Each animal has his role and deserves to be protected from extinction; a lower population of any species means a natural disturbance and disorder.

Animal Encounter center is for that welcoming visitors and volunteers all year long, the best way to help Animal Encounter accomplishing its goal is to act responsibly, legally and ethically when hunting, stop the shooting on spot, once this is done, you will be reducing the pressure of healing more injured animals on the center, the second way is to visit the center and support it by any significant contribution, Animal Encounter is a non-lucrative NGO that does not accept online donations like other shell ones, the reason is that summoning you to make a visit and interact with animals and getting education about living creatures counts much more than donating at home because once cultivation is steady, taking action will be much more fruitful.

I recommend you to visit Animal Encounter, Dr. Mounir will make you fall in love with animals and recognize them more, and you could get a chance to know how to help saving Lebanese wildlife depending on your capacity, noting that the place is awesome to visit as it provides deer feeding inside barriers, hosts the last 2 Lebanese bears, hyenas, wolves, storks, foxes, falcons, and much more lovely species.

To more responsibility and maturity preventing our nature more damage, and to more actions relieving illnesses we've caused to our world!

P.S: follow Animal Encounter page on Facebook to more details