Sofiya Manukyan, www.hra.am
…According to the data provided by Armenia Tree Project, nearly 750,000 cubic meters forests have been cutting down in the territory of Armenia at present…500,000 cubic meters are used as fuel, while only 10-12% are officially registered…
“ArmForest” Director Martoun Matevosyan asserts the forest sector in Armenia doesn’t have any sustainable business…the business should be complied with forestry enterprise management plans.
Nevertheless, according to “EcoLur”, current forest felling can lead to irreversible losses. “Business should be excluded from the forest sector,” EcoLur asserts. However, the authorities don’t agree with this explaining it as follows: in this way a heavy burden will be put on community residents for whom forest is the source for fuel and possible incomes.
As a solution EcoLur offers, for example, to ban felling for sale purposes and to cut gas price for villagers.
Agriculture minister Gerasim Alaverdyan sees the solution in setting up special observation points that will check the cars coming out of the forest in order to decrease the volumes of illegal felling.
Another suggestion is to improve employment conditions for forestry officers, as they salary makes up about 50,000 AMD. You may suppose it’s impossible to abolish illegal felling in this manner.
“Khazarashen” Chairman Hransuh Kharatyan asserts that the main role of forest eliminators is taken not by locals on need of fuel, but by the business seizing the best trees.
October 13, 2010