EcoLur
RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's announcement about 10 million trees to be planted in Armenia in 2020, which may be a prelude to increase that number to 30 million in the coming years, as Deputy Minister of Environment Vardan Melikyan stated at the press conference on November 14.
“The plan to plant 10 million trees in 2020 is unprecedented, but we hope and plan that in 5-6 years those 10 million will no longer be unprecedented. Armenia is committed to doubling the forest cover by 2050, which implies an additional 265,000 hectares of forest, is about 800-900 million trees.
We have to start planting about 30 million trees a year. That 10 million will become a larger exercise to plant 30 million trees, and we need about 5,000 to 40-50 days a year. I suppose these large-scale works should start in 2025-2026. There will also be a serious opportunity in young tree production because we do not yet have enough seedlings. It is necessary to establish new and modern nurseries, which will produce seedlings with closed root system,” Vardan Melikyan said.
Melikyan also said they already have a separate area of about 6,000 hectares in ArmForest forest land to plant 10 million trees. “Trees we will need 3300 hectares to plant 10 million if we plant exclusively on forest land. But I think there will be plantings in the settlements as well,” he said.
Referring to forest use for energy purposes, Vardan Melikyan noted that 80 thousand cubic meters have already been distributed. At the same time, the volume of legally sold wood this year amounted to 25,000 cubic meters, 80 percent of which has already been collected. The set price for 1 cubic meter of wood this year was about 21,000 drams.
Referring to the statistics of cases of illegal logging, Melikyan noted that they do not have such data.
November 14, 2019 at 19:05