Authorities Run Forest Policy Resulting in Legal Forest Felling to Resemble ‘Dark’ 90’s

EcoLur

Pine and fir trees are fell down near Lermontovo Village: EcoLur working group received this alarm signal and together with Eduard, Arzumanyan, the Hraparak, and Vanadzor Aarhus Center Coordinator Pertch Bojukyan visited the site of felling. This is forest area, Margahovit, in Gugark Forestry. At every turn you can see chopped-off trunks and branches, newly cut stumps jut out everywhere. The first impression is the 90’s of energy crisis are back. But if you look more closely, you can see each stump has a red mark, which means this felling is a legal one. As it turns out, so-called cleaning cutting was in progress this area, i.e. cutting that should promote good forest reproduction. Our officials all the time persuade us this kind of cutting is necessary, and as a rule, old trees are cut down to give place for young ones to grow. But the picture shows completely something else – good and straight trees are cut down that have valuable timber. They don’t go deep into the forest so as to take out timber without any obstacles from the forest and to get it to the destination. The sign on the tree says 43,78  cubic meters of industrial and 44,71  cubic meters of firewood will be cut down in this area. As “ArmForest” SNCO Chief Forestry Officer Ruben Petrosyan detailed in his telephone conversation with the EcoLur, first of all, 405 trees are planned to be cut down and this figure is reflected in the management plan of the forestry enterprise. The forestry officer we met in the forest told after the newspapers started writing about felling, the inspection and police arrived on the spot. “Now I am hurrying to the police station,” he said.

We are sure this is the result of the policy run by our government in terms of forest. On one hand, they state all the efforts must be put to preserve forest, to make police and prosecutors more active who successfully collect kickback from regular forestry officers. On the other hand, the government refuses to finance forest sector to a full extent and orders “ArmForest” to supplement this funding at the expense of forest selling, i.e. only 30% of all funding.

A question arises: how ArmForest must get these funds and whether ArmForest will cut down and then sell old and sick trees which have no value. Against this background it is no wonder that Government member and Agriculture Minister Sergo Karapetyan changes the administration of the State Monitoring for Forest Monitoring, which dares to publicly declare that the management plans of forestry enterprises are based on incorrect data and moratorium should be imposed on several kinds of forest felling, until it gets clear what we have in our forest sector.  

July 18, 2011 at 13:43