Lattakia-Sana
Lattakia Governorate, in cooperation with the Directorate of Agriculture, is following up plans for implementing agricultural roads and land reclamation with an expansion in them ... especially in the areas affected by fires in the governorate countryside, as well as implementing fire lines in forest areas.
In separate areas of the governorate countryside, about 28 heavy machinery are working on a daily basis to rehabilitate sites affected by previous fires that are no longer suitable for natural regeneration by constructing terraces for easy access to planters for their care and watering.
While accompanying SANA with the implementation of agricultural roads and fire lines in several locations in the northern countryside of Lattakia, including Old Zaghrine, Balouran, Zagaro and Khirbet Solas, the Director of Agriculture, Engineer Munther Khairbek, in a statement to SANA's correspondent, indicated that the Directorate has a wide plan for afforestation of the burned lands in addition to restoring about 2,200 km of roads Forestry and fire lines, indicating that most of them have been restored, up to 90 percent, during the period from the fourth to the seventh month, with about 300 kilometers remaining, which is left naturally to be restored during this period, in order for the mechanisms to rotate at the same time to fight the fires.
Khairbek pointed out that the directorate has implemented its plan to reclaim the burned lands at a rate of more than 60 percent at the governorate level. Currently, all the mechanisms are being pushed into the months of November and December, where about 28 heavy machinery, including bulldozers and trucks, are operating in several separate locations in the governorate countryside.
He indicated that the mechanisms work on a daily basis at a rate of more than 8 working hours to implement the entire plan at a time when all the work requirements from the cadres of fruitful afforestation, the Directorate of Land Reclamation and the Department of Forestry, provide more than a million different forest plantations in the directorate's nurseries.
Engineer Khairbek explained that the directorate implemented, during the past year, a 100 percent afforestation plan completely. The area planned for afforestation this year is 1,000 hectares, pointing out that the damage caused by the fires constituted an additional impetus for the directorate’s workers to increase the afforestation plan.
Khairbek stressed that the afforestation plan primarily targets the forest and the local community to create a mutual benefit that contributes to preserving and protecting the forest by choosing varieties that encourage the use of forest products, including nectarine trees, medicinal and aromatic plants, with 60 percent of the afforestation plan, in addition to fruiting pine and laurel trees.
On the directorate’s plan for reclamation of agricultural lands, Khairbek referred to the current year’s plan that includes about 500 hectares of land that has been subjected to fires during the previous periods and is not suitable for natural renewal, as terraces are implemented for re-afforestation and easy access to, watering and caring for the forests .. He emphasized that afforestation during the previous periods on the terraces gave Positive results in rapid growth.
For his part, Eng. Akram Laika, head of the machinery group operating in the old Zaghrine and Balloran site, indicated that the group is working on rehabilitating the lands after the fire to plant them with various forest trees, indicating that terraces and agricultural service roads have been implemented in the site with an area of about 1000 dunums within less than a month. About 55 percent.
Laika pointed out that there are springs in the region's valley that the people used to benefit from, and that was noticed by an additional service way for farmers to lay water lines or help extinguish fires, stressing at the same time that the site will be rehabilitated in less than a month.
Bassam Al-Ibrahim