YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, NOYAN TAPAN. The proceedings of the joint "Management of Natural Reserves and Reduction of Poverty" program of the World Bank and the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection are envisaged to finish in January 2009. As Armen Badalian, the Director of the Office of the Program Implementation, mentioned during the workshop held in Ijevan on August 3, the aim of this program, which started in 2002, is to contribute to the improvement of the living standards of the population through the application of the productive mechanisms of the management of natural reserves. According to him, the management of forests is one of the most important components of this program. Particularty, forest-restoration complex measures are being implemented in the territories of the "Ijevan" and "Sevkar" forest economies of "Hayantar", such as resoration of degraded forests, increase in productivity of forest lands, as well as many others. The proceedings of the above-mentioned component, according to coordinator Ayser Ghazarian, started in November 2006 and only 30% of the envisaged work has been done so far. He attached importance to the choice of regions: Tavush and Gegharkunik, where the most expansive deforestations were implemented in the 1990s. According to A. Ghazarian, a space of 37641 linear meters of general length is envisaged to be fenced, about 20 thousand out of which in the forests of Ijevan and the rest in those of Sevkar. " In case of implementing envisaged forest restoration and care measures in the future years, an increase of afforested spaces by 282.2 hectares is envisaged," he mentioned and added that a grove is envisaged to be founded in the neighbourhood of the city of Ijevan by planting about 32 kinds of trees and plants within the framework of the program. It was also mentioned that 16 million U.S. dollars, in general, have been allocated for the implementation of this program by the RA government, the Swiss SIDA company, the International Development Association, and the Global Ecological Fund.

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