Seven of Ajloun's eight observation towers are out of service, along with two of six in Jerash, leaving holes in the system built to catch fires in their first minutes.
اضافة اعلان
A fire that burned dozens of dunams of rugged woodland between Jerash and Ajloun ten days ago has revived demands for tighter forest monitoring in the two governorates, where most observation towers now stand empty for want of staff.
Only one of Ajloun's eight towers is operational, at Umm al-Sisan in Anjara. The others have been idle for years: Sarabis and the Base tower in Anjara, Mahboub in Ain Janna, Khallat Salem in Ajloun, Arjan, Junaid and Kufranja.
Jerash has six towers, four of them working. The remaining two went out of service after the employees who staffed them retired and were not replaced. The governorate's five forestry stations face the same squeeze, having lost personnel to transfers and retirement.
The First Line of Detection
Ibrahim Qawqaza, head of the Forestry Department at the Jerash Agriculture Directorate, called the towers among the most important tools in forest protection because they allow fires and encroachments to be reported in real time. A tower is only worth what its observer sees, Qawqaza explained, and the first minutes of a fire decide everything in dense woodland where dry vegetation and wind can carry flames quickly.
Qawqaza added that the towers also catch illegal logging, unlicensed harvesting and violations of forest land rules at a stage when a response can still stop them.
Ghassan Al-Ayasrah, head of the Green Society for Environmental and Nature Protection, noted that elevated positions let observers scan wide stretches of woodland, pinpoint the approximate source of smoke and alert civil defense teams before a blaze spreads. Al-Ayasrah argued that the deterrent value of a staffed tower matches its firefighting value, since visible monitoring discourages loggers.
Protection depends on an integrated system of patrols, personnel, firefighting crews and coordination with security agencies, Al-Ayasrah said. The towers remain its first point of detection.
Five Years Without Guards in Ajloun
Sitan Al-Sarhan, director of agriculture in Ajloun, confirmed that the problem has persisted for roughly five years and that only one of the governorate's eight towers is staffed. Al-Sarhan said the unguarded towers have been vandalized repeatedly, and that the directorate recently formed a committee to assess their condition, plan maintenance and calculate staffing needs before approaching the ministry for guards.
Sources within the directorate said the towers have no round-the-clock guards and are visited only occasionally by rangers and forestry inspectors. Permanent coverage of all eight would require three guards each, working in shifts.
Environmental activist Khaled Abu Waqar acknowledged that encroachments and fires in Ajloun have fallen compared with previous years, but said the towers built to reinforce protection have been left abandoned. Responsibility is shared between official bodies, local initiatives and volunteers, Abu Waqar argued, though the larger share rests with the government, which controls the resources.
Ali al-Qudah, another environmental activist, said forests and woodland cover about 34 percent of Ajloun, some 134,000 dunams. Al-Qudah noted that the towers were built by the governorate council and the Ministry of Agriculture, have been out of service for more than five years, and have never had rotating guards. Leaving them open to repeat offenders, he argued, encourages further attacks.
Activist Khaled Abu Al-Ezz urged the Ministry of Agriculture to rehabilitate and staff the towers, step up patrols and enforce the law against anyone cutting into forest resources before more ancient trees are lost. Delay, Abu Al-Ezz said, will cost more than the repairs.
Bakr Al-Zaghoul, a resident, traced part of the problem to overlapping jurisdiction between the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment and other bodies. He called for a single authority with full powers over forestry, whether the Environmental Police or the General Directorate of Forestry, alongside activation of the Forestry Law and development projects that employ young people in forested areas, modeled on those run by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature.
Activist Abu Nidal Al-Khatatbeh called for a national awareness campaign and more staff for the Ajloun Agriculture Directorate, some assigned as tower guards. Reactivating a tower requires maintenance and at least two employees, Al-Khatatbeh said, describing that as a minimum.
Munther Al-Zaghoul, a former governorate council member, pushed for drones, cameras mounted on the towers for early warning, water reservoirs inside the forests and access roads for firefighting vehicles. The number of forest rangers is too small to cover the governorate's woodland, he added.
Money Already Committed
The Ajloun Governorate Council allocated 550,000 dinars in its 2018 budget for maintaining and building forestry watchtowers under the governorate's Directorate of Agriculture. Of that, 250,000 dinars went toward maintenance, solar panels and four surveillance cameras per tower, covering 16 towers [needs verification]. Some towers still carry their solar equipment but remain unstaffed.
Farmer Khaled Al-Amour said early detection is the cheapest form of fire control, and that suppression grows harder and more expensive with every hour a blaze goes unnoticed. A mature tree lost to fire or a saw takes decades to replace, he added.
Farmer Muhammad Al-Rimouni said staffing the towers fully and reinforcing the forestry stations would restore continuous monitoring across two of the country's most important natural reserves. Prevention and early detection remain the least costly tools available, Al-Rimouni argued, which makes the towers more than structures scattered among the trees.
