Save Armenia's Forests
- by: Judith B.
- recipient: Tigran Sargsyan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia
Teghut forest in Northern Armenia consists of thousands of acres of unspoilt woodland filled with wildlife, some highly endangered. If a mining company has its way though, this won't be the case for much longer.
The Armenian Copper Program (ACP), a company with an unimpressive record of causing intense pollution linked to illness and birth defects, is planning to clear 1,500 acres of the forest for open-pit copper mining. It also wants to create a toxic waste dump in a nearby river gorge, allowing deadly heavy metals to run into the water supply.
ACP argues that the area needs jobs, which is true. However, what it does not need is the destruction of its natural resources, the loss of any chance of using the forest for tourism or anything else, or yet more pollution endangering the lives of locals, and certainly not for the sake of low-paid, dangerous jobs in a copper mine.
Ask the Armenian Government to stop allowing ACP to wreck its country's wealth of natural habitat.
We the undersigned ask that you stop the Armenian Copper Program's plan to create a copper and molybdenum mine in the Teghut forest and a waste dump in the Duqanadzor River Gorge. The resulting pollution, soil erosion and impact on climate change and health would endanger on local residents, and the destruction of virgin forest prevents it ever being exploited in any other way.
While the area’s need for jobs is obvious, the consequences of allowing yet more large-scale environmental destruction far outweigh the benefits. There are ways to increase a region's prosperity without destroying it in the process.
We ask that you halt plans for the mine and the associated waste dump as a matter of urgency.
