AUTHORITIES RUN FOREST POLICY RESULTING IN LEGAL FOREST FELLING TO RESEMBLE ‘DARK’ 90’S

arminfo
Monday, July 18, 16:15

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.

EcoLur NGO reports that 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”, EcoLur says. 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”, EcoLur says.