An Initial Assessment of Community Values, Rules, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Mount Hermon, Lebanon: Key Perspectives towards Biocultural Conservation

Mount Hermon, Lebanon, has a long history of human occupation reflected in the landscape and ecology that makes biocultural perspectives highly relevant for the conservation of this mountain territory. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 126 local informants during 2022–2023 using a Values, Rules and Knowledge (VRK) framework. Our findings illustrate that while instrumental values of this territory (e.g., water sources, tourism, land, and good soils for crop production) were most frequently cited by informants (50.84%), relational values (e.g., social identity, sense of place, and spirituality in human-nature relationships) also scored high (41.88%), with subjective intrinsic values of nature as an end in itself (e.g., the right of nature to exist on its own behalf) least cited (7.28%). At the same time, co-occurrence of formal rules (62.26% of informants’ citations) and informal rules (37.74%) among actors with significant local ecological knowledge (LEK) in resource use, was identified in a 70.27% of the cases. Principal component analysis demonstrated five strong correlations of enabling or conflicting interactions within the VRK framework that merit close consideration for a meaningful participatory conservation strategy of both biodiversity and cultural diversity in a key hotspot. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the socioecological context of the Mt. Hermon ecosystem and to orient decision making for effective management and conservation planning in the region and beyond.