Damage caused by illegal logging in Armenia has reached upwards of $100,000, the authorities said. The statement followed warnings issued by environmental activists.
Eco Patrol, a public environmental initiative, first warned of large-scale illegal logging on 21 August with a video showing the effects of logging in forests adjacent to the town of Ijevan in the northern Tavush region.
‘There are no logging areas here, tree cutting is prohibited by law, but anyone who has friends and acquaintances is doing business and destroying nature’, read the caption of the video, calling the condition of the forest as ‘disgraceful’.
The visit came after multiple reports the initiative received about logging in the forest, with Gor Hovhannisyan, the head of the initiative saying in the video: ‘Honestly, there’s hardly any forest left here’.
The environmental activists stated that they walked less than one kilometre and photographed around 20 freshly cut tree stumps.
To preempt any claims that the trees had been cut long ago, Hovhannisyan pointed to the wood debris and asserted that the stumps were clearly from recent logging activity.
Hovhannisyan also reported hearing the sound of a chainsaw while they were filming.
‘If the state doesn’t respond, which it is obligated to [do], we’ll return and show the full picture’, Hovhannisyan said in the short video, adding that their report was 'just a warning to those state officials here who are paid from our taxes to do this job but are failing to do so’.
Further citing rumours coming from Ijevan, Hovhannisyan accused unnamed officials of corruption in allowing the illegal logging to continue.
Less than a week after the environmentalists’ report, the Armenian authorities estimated the environmental damage at $110,000.
On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection and Mining Inspection Body reported that they conducted inspections at the Ijevan Forestry, as a result of which they documented around 700 illegally felled trees of ‘various types and diameters’.
According to them, the inspections covered the period from August 2024 to July 2025. The findings were submitted to the Investigative Committee for further legal action.
Previously, on Monday, Eduard Karapetyan, a representative of Armenia's state Eco-Patrol Service, claimed to RFE/RL that there has been no significant increase in the overall rate of logging in recent years. Instead, he said the rise in reported cases is attributed to the establishment of the Eco-Patrol Service.
Karapetyan further noted that illegal logging is not limited to Ijevan, but occurs regularly in other regions as well.
RFE/RL cited official statistics that show a gradual decline in Armenia’s forest coverage. While forests once covered more than 11% of the country’s territory in the 1990s, the latest official data indicates that this figure has decreased to 9.7%.
