Aghvan Hovsepyan decided to organize something better this year, instead of spending money on a senseless and poorly organized unity dance that only lasted 15 minutes. Besides that, with this he wants citizens to join them. Even more, he wants that because his dream to turn his “Nig-Aparan” nationalistic union into a political party didn’t come true. First, the general prosecutor informed the press about his intention to found a party and then after Artashes Tumanyan was fired he rejected what he had said by saying that journalists had misunderstood him. Aghvan Hovsepyan wants to mobilize people not with the help of a political party but with the help of this humanitarian action. There is another aim: the general prosecutor is trying to demonstrate that he is far from politics and is a patriot. He wants to make people believe that a person that plants trees in the whole territory of our country is loyal to his country.
Anyway, whatever the purpose is, it is good to plant trees, especially when there is a lack of greenery in Armenia. On March 8th, they announced about their intention to plant 3,200000 trees, i.e. as many trees as many citizens there are in our country. During these two weeks they have planted trees in Syunik and Tavush regions. Project coordinator Aram Karapetyan couldn’t answer to our question as to how many trees have been planted so far. They are going to make calculations at the end of this week. But according to them the number of the planted trees and plants they have is over one million. According to A. Karapetyan, some of the planted trees have been presented to the different non-governmental and governmental organizations.
They are also going to import plants from Ukraine and Georgia. According to the project coordinators, a lot of businessmen are planting trees in their surrounding territories too. “For example Hrant Vardanyan has ordered to plant gray colored Christmas trees in the surrounding territories of “Grand Tobacco”. Some people have also called us from Ijevan city and offered their help to take plants from the forest, they only need some help to do this work”, said the project coordinator.
The head of “Hayantar” (Armforest), Rafik Petrosyan says that they have given 100000 seeds to this program for free. But the number of the presented trees is not enough and will not reach 3 million for sure. According to the program manager they are going to bring plants from the Armenian forests, i.e. they will bring trees from the forests of Ijevan and Goris cities and will plant them in Yerevan communities. It turns out that they take out trees from one place and than plant them in another place and say that they have planted over three million new trees. It turns out that they demonstrate tree planting more than really plant trees. Mr. Karapetyan does not agree with this. “We will make sanitary purification and will create new conditions for trees”, said Mr. Karapetyan.
Mr. Karapetyan told us that they had consulted with specialists in this field, as well as had opened a foundation to collect money for this purpose. But the head of the foundation, Vrej Markosyan said that no one had made any transfers to their account yet. He said that their friends and relatives had given money for that purpose and all that money was under the control of the project coordinator. But Mr. Markosyan didn’t inform us who their friends were and how much money they had given. He mentioned only one name: share holder of “Armenia Mariott” hotel, Nshan Atayan. We were also informed that the owner of “Shant”, Manvel Ghazaryan had planted trees in his home town (Mravyan).
According to Mr. Karapetyan they have received a lot of applications from Marzes and Yerevan to join this program. “The head of Avan community has come up with a special program on how many territories they want to plant trees in, i.e. near schools and other places. Most of them will plant their own trees. We will give plants to some of them, as well as technical and labor support, but most of them will do that work on their own. Why don’t you ask why and by whom the construction near the botanical gardens was stopped? We are going to plant trees in five hectare territories”.
Specialists say that planting trees is not so easy and you can’t plant whatever you like and wherever you like.
According to Mr. Karapetyan before starting this program they have consulted with a lot of specialists and are still getting advisory support. They said that they have asked for advisory support from the agricultural academy. But we were informed from the academy that they had applied but hadn’t started their work. These specialists also said that the forests of Armenia are in such poor conditions that everyone should plant trees: wherever they like and whatever they like, it doesn’t matter. By the way, Mr. Karapetyan said that their program will be sustainable and will continue in the future too. They may not plant 3200000 trees this year. It is very important for us to plant trees and take care of them.