EcoLur

RA Government decision on the alienation of a unique part of Crimean pine trees provoked   scientific community’s outrage. The Armenian Botanical Society that helped with the first steps of making of Jrvezh Forest Park sent a letter to the Chairman of National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and RA Minister of Nature Protection Aram Harutyunyan. This letter particularly says:

“We, the members of the Armenian Botanical Society where the leading botanists are united, including the Academicians of the National Academy of Sciences of RA, Doctors of Sciences, Professors, and PhDs of Sciences are outraged by RA Government decision № 684-N dated on 18 June 2009. In accordance with this decision, 21,76 ha of magnificent pine forest was alienated from Jrvezh Forest Park and given to Voghchaberd Community.

This plantation of amazingly beautiful Crimean pine trees rare in Armenia was founded nearly 30 years ago and is a unique mass of grown evergreen trees that clean the air in the areas adjacent to Yerevan and saturate it with oxygen all the year round.

Such decision is especially surprising from the standpoint of the following fact: the forest park founded in 1977 is a part of “Reserve-Park Complex” specially protected territory of the Ministry of Nature Protection of RA; consequently the forest park is the common property of the Armenians...

...Jrvezh forest park is the only significant green mass adjacent to Yerevan that can surely be called “lungs” for the city. Its role for the capital is hard to revalue especially now when Yerevan is almost deprived of its parks because of irresponsible tree cutting and construction of a large number of cafes and restaurants instead.

...We are extremely surprised how the Ministry of Nature Protection of RA (“Reserve-Park Compex” specially protected territory including Jrvezh Forest Park is under the Ministry’s jurisdiction) could have agreed to such a step. Such a decision violates the Law on Specially Protected Territories, the Convention on Biological Biodiversity, the Convention on Global Climate Change, and the Aarhus Convention.

We are strongly against the transfer of one of the best park sections to Voghchaberd community. This park section is the result of painstaking labor of our fathers and grandfathers, the common property of the whole Armenian nation. We persistently ask you to review this hasty decision”.