BEIRUT — “It’s a very complicated process to send animals. There are about 20 people involved,” Maggie Shaawari, vice president of Animals Lebanon, says as she drives up a steep dirt road in northern Lebanon and juggles Facebook updates, taking photos of the lion and tigers in crates ahead of her and calling on her iPhone to the animal welfare organization’s office, people at the airport, press contacts and other staff members.

In the heart of Lebanon's Chouf region, deep in a valley, there's a private zoo that was previously full of exotic animals — lions, tigers, flamingos, a chimpanzee, even a cheetah. But with the collaboration of French veterinarian Jean-Christophe Gerard, the sanctuary he works at, Tonga Terre D’Accueil, and Lebanese organization Animals Lebanon, this zoo slowly has been emptied of some of those animals.

With the cooperation of the zoo owner, a lioness, a tigress and a male tiger were removed April 8. They were put in internationally approved crates, and driven out of the valley, to the Beirut-Rafic Hariri Airport to start the long trip to the French sanctuary.

This journey has been long in the making. The first time Gerard came to the zoo for these particular animals was in October 2013, to check the health of the cats and insert microchips. There were four cats then — two lions and two tigers. About a month after that visit, Animals Lebanon was notified that the male lion had died and had been promptly sent to a taxidermist to be stuffed.