Yerevan remains without green zones: environmentalists

• Thursday, March 24, 09:28

On threshold of summer Armenian businessmen's appetite is growing in real earnest.   

Illegal cutting of trees and extermination of green territories for the sake of construction of one more cafe have already become very typical to Yerevan. Unfortunately, in this matter the opinion of ordinary citizens of Yerevan are not taken into consideration. A brugh example of that is last year's scandal around the Students' Park, which ended with the victory of business over ecology: the ugly cafes are built and the trees are cut.  

Another sweet spot for businessmen is the territory adjoining the Drama Theater (Issahakyan, 28). The attempts to exterminate the green zone here have been made for several years. Some three years ago a scandal ended with a tree planting action, moreover, the nursery plants were provided by the Ministry of Nature Protection. However, on March 24 night unknown persons cut all the 16 trees and cleared the area for another facility. The ArmInfo news agency informed the
Municipality of Yerevan of this fact, which sent its representatives and photographed the place of the incident. The Municipality agrees that an act of vandalism has taken place, but the question whether the initiators of the tree cutting will be detected hangs in the air.       

"There are no green zones in Yerevan. There are only some groups of trees in the yards, streets and in some parks, which have not yet been turned into cafes. One cannot call them green zones by the standards accepted for urban landscapes", Head of EcoLur NGO Inga Zarafyan told ArmInfo. According to her, the situation has aggravated so much that now one speak of the fight for separate trees, not for green zones.  "This fight is lost with each cut tree", said Zarafyan.

For his part, Chairman of the Green Union of Armenia Hakob Sanasaryan recalled the statement of Mayor of Yerevan Karen Karapetyan. "Karapetyan said that he would not give the green zones to business. If he keeps his promise, we'll have a mayor to be respected", he said.