AMMAN — Ministry of Agriculture teams collected some 130 tonnes
of firewood in Amman until yesterday, to be sold and distributed, following the
snowstorm which recently affected the Kingdom, ministry spokesperson Lawrence
Al-Majali said.
اضافة اعلان
Majali told
Jordan News that the ministry had hired around 7,000
workers to conduct a six-month cleanup campaign in the northern and southern
forests of the Kingdom before the recent snowstorm.
Cleaning up forests, trimming trees, and collecting broken
branches has helped the remaining trees withstand the snowstorm better than the
trees in Amman, he said.
The number of forest fires last summer in Jordan declined by
more than 46 percent, while around the world the number of forest fires had
gone up, and this might also be attributed to the cleaning campaign, according
to Majali.
Trees, mainly coniferous, but also palms, were massively damaged
in Amman. Deciduous trees fared better.
Majali wished to stress that the drought of the past season was
not a reason trees fell during the storm, adding it is only a matter of pruning
the trees.
Areas like the Sports City and university campuses have high
numbers of trees and they were most impacted by the snowstorm.
Regarding the selling and distribution of the firewood, Majali
said that the official procedure is to collect the fallen trees, register them
officially and duly, store them in warehouses belonging to forestry
departments, and sell them at affordable prices.
He added that in order to distribute firewood to needy families
there is need of approval from the Prime Ministry, since firewood brings
financial revenues to the government, but hopefully a big part of the collected
firewood will be given to those who need it most.
Secretary-General of the Farmers Union Mahmoud Al-Ouran told
Jordan News that some of the fallen trees were more than 20 years old, and
confirmed that more trees were damaged in Amman than in the forests north of
the Kingdom.
He said that the ministry must carry study the reasons the
snowstorm affected the trees in Amman so severely, especially knowing that the
Alexa snowstorm of some years ago was stronger than this year’s yet caused less
harm to trees.
“We must always address climate change with scientific
research,” Ouran said, pointing out that Jordan is part of the Mediterranean
Sea climate and it is witnessing climate changes.
“We must focus on the reasons for what happened, learn from
them, and not only put the blame on the snowstorm,” Ouran added.
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