Pave Paradise And Put Up A Parking Lot
By Moorad Mooradian, PhD

The title of this article is from a song by Joni Mitchell that was popular a few years ago. Armenia is not destroying paradise for a parking lot, but the government is in the process of destroying paradise in order to build a highway. In the destruction, they would be cutting down over 100,000 trees, rare fauna will be lost, and the home to the only remaining three Asian leopards in the entire country will be destroyed. All that, in addition to the ecological impact of removing so many trees. The targeted area for this rape is the Shikahogh Reserve.

The area of concern is located in the southern part of the country which nudges the Iranian border in Kapan. It is a natural wonder; a forest so thick that its giant oaks block out the sun even in the bright days of July and August. The locals know the threat and maintain that the forest has only escaped the devastation that has occurred in other parts of Armenia because the tree bandits do not have an access road. The steep slopes do not support logging trucks or heavy forest razing equipment. Unless the government comes to its senses and designs an alternative route, one of the three remaining forest reserves in Armenia is about to disappear along with its God given blocks to enemy tanks and other heavy equipment. As it is, the World Bank has stated that unless Armenia reverses its trend of denuding the landscape of trees, the country will be a desert in about 20 years. Stripping Armenia of its trees has been a trend since 1900. One hundred five years ago, 25 percent of Armenia was forest. Today, it is reduced to about eight percent forest. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states made up of sand dunes have oil to attract non-Arab investors and tourists. If Armenia is reduced to sand, it has no oil as an attraction and what natural allure the country does have will be lost.

The Armenia Tree Project and other groups, with your help, are doing their best to reforest the country, but the tree bandits are cutting faster than concerned and generous people can plant. Also, bear in mind that the tree thieves will be felling full grown oaks and other trees that take many years to mature.

There is talk from some sources that the road is necessary for strategic reasons. I have been in the region a few times. As it stands in nature’s blessings, unless tanks, trucks, and artillery can fly, the trees provide a natural barrier to heavy invasion. Put a road through it and an invader will be handed a fast track route from the southern border all the way to Yerevan. There is no reason not to build a road or highway, the problem is where this highway is being built.

In 1958 the Shikahogh Reserve was declared on the southern end of Kapan forests. The forest itself stands from 1000-2200 meters above sea level and contains numerous types of trees, including fruit trees from pistachios to Caucasian persimmons to figs. The variety of flowers is a botanist’s paradise. The forest is also home to the Caspian Turkey, Bearded Eagle, South-European Berkut and more birds, plus wolf, fox, Caucasian lynx, grey hare, badger and others, in addition to the Asian leopards already mentioned. As has been proven throughout the world, once the engineers move in with heavy equipment and dynamite, Armenians can kiss nature’s creatures good-bye.

Armenia has the unflattering name of “Karasdan” given by its own people and the government’s plan for the road will only serve to aggravate the problem. Armenian landscape is hardly a welcoming picture for tourists now with all its rocks. The country promises to become a desert unless the politicians start thinking of the consequences of stripping the land of its trees.

Up to now, the local population has not even been brought into the equation—a far cry from the democracy that all Armenians desire. Many of the residents of the region and its local leaders first learned about the plans to destroy the forest from news on the TV and when they saw the heavy equipment brought in to hack away at the trees. The people of the region do not want their forest reserve touched.

Further, there does not seem to be valid documentation authorizing the destruction of the reserve; the locals insist that the project is being launched by order of the president, ostensibly for strategic purposes. Even the companies (four) that are supposed to do the work appear to be phantoms. None of the residents have seen “company” officials and the trucks and earth moving equipment that have been brought in have no license plates or names on them. Also, the government will be violating international agreements it signed that specify that public hearings must be held before any activity which adversely impacts the environment is begun. There has not been one public hearing held at this writing.

The stated need to denude this site of trees for strategic reasons is a sham. No one disputes that Armenia needs overland connections with Iran. The World Wildlife Fund, an environmental NGO, claims that there are alternative routes that are less expensive and less destructive. However, when the Ministries of Nature Protection (the name is a cruel joke) and Communication and Transportation (they need classes on what communication really means) went to Kapan, spokesmen for the ministries stated that the engineers for the Communication and Transportation ministry are not favorably disposed to any alternative.

Dan Martin is the senior managing director of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund of NGOs with headquarters in Washington, D.C. To this point they have provided Armenia with approximately $500,000 to implement various ecological programs in the country. Mr. Martin was asked the question, if the government carries on with the denuding of forests, would that endanger future ecological funding? The response from Mr. Martin was typical bureaucratic nonsense. He claimed that they were concerned about “Shikahogh” but “we are simply an international donor organization and cannot influence the decisions made by the Ministry of Transportation or the Ministry of Nature Protection.” Let them just point out to the Armenian authorities that they are violating international accords, working in opposition to the reasons for providing the funds and that this issue will be brought before a hearing with a recommendation to cut such funds from Armenia. Perhaps then one would see some immediate turns for the positive by the Armenian government. Dan Martin needs pressure to take some preemptive action!

I do not recall where I read the comment, but it is worth repeating: it is too bad the Armenian lobby groups and the donor groups have spent all of their time on winning monetary awards for Armenia but have spent no time insuring that the funds are being properly utilized. Armenia has not been held accountable for much of what it has received. This apparent imminent rape of the Shikahogh Forest Reserve should cause all of the donor bases to pause and make new evaluations. Meanwhile, it may help if all readers send some type of communication thru the Armenian Embassy in Washington to Pres. Kocharian, expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of democratic process and the violation of the ecological balance in the country.

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