As part of a preventive plan to preserve the remaining forests and natural reserves, and pending the arrival of firefighting planes in the event that the cost of their purchase and periodic maintenance is secured, the Ministry of Environment supports some pioneering preventive ideas, and encourages the implementation of regular maintenance works for forest areas and reserves, especially the perennial trees that constitute the last remnants of This wealth is in Lebanon.
pioneering idea
In exclusive statements to “Sky News Arabia”, the Minister of Environment, Nasser Yassin, praised the preventive plan that “aims to protect forest wealth and prevent the spread of fires, by removing dry weeds and extra branches that impede the growth of trees and prevent the movement of civil defense teams in the event of a fire, and this helps To stop the spread of fires and quickly combat them since the beginning of their outbreak.”
Yassin added: “The residues of trees that are collected and grinded in factories are mixed with the remains of olive grains (peat) after extracting the oil from it in certain proportions to produce heating wood, and they are distributed to neighboring towns at an almost free price, as this provides a cheap heating method.”
And the minister added, “We are working with international organizations to generalize the experience of factories in more than one region and to obtain assistance in establishing other factories, after the beginning was encouraging in the Chouf Cedar Forest and Reserve, and we seek to build factories in several regions from the south to Byblos and Akkar in the far north of Lebanon.”
Yassin also revealed a serious experience of converting damaged wheat in the silos of the port of Beirut as a result of the explosion that occurred in August 2020, into a heating material after mixing it with other materials.
Other benefits
On the other hand, the director of the Chouf Cedar Nature Reserve, Nizar Hani, said of the plan: “We trim the trees and clean the reserve from weeds and dry plants. We also create natural separations between the forest of the reserve and the neighboring villages to prevent the spread of fire if it occurs.”
And Hani added, in his speech to “Sky News Arabia”: “The results of the process are crushed in two factories that we have established for this purpose in the Chouf district, and we mix the materials with the waste of the olive kernel (peat) to produce industrial firewood that is used for heating, albeit with less efficiency than natural firewood.”
He added: “We distributed 120,000 pieces of our production of industrial firewood for heating to the neighboring villages, and we are working to increase the factories in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment. We also requested a license from the Ministry of Agriculture to clean the forests that were affected by the fire last year, and we distributed the firewood resulting from the campaign to the neighboring villages.” Free”.
The director of the reserve explained: “We also developed the experience of making natural compost from sawdust that we collected from the reserve and the surrounding areas by mixing it with the residues of chicken farms, and we distributed 600 tons of it on the lands adjacent to the reserve for free with the support of the Ministry of Environment, which is the ministry that sponsors and supports Lebanon’s reserves. for each activity in the Chouf Cedar Model Reserve.