Residents say Azerbaijani troops expanding positions in Armenia's Shikahogh reserve

By Siranush Adamyan

Residents say Azerbaijani forces have entrenched inside Armenia's Shikahogh State Reserve and are clearing hectares of forest to build roads, dugouts, and fortified positions, the RFE/RL Armenian Service reported.

Shikahogh, in the southern Syunik province, is Armenia's second-largest forest reserve and home to roughly 1,100 plant species and to animals listed in Armenia's Red Book. Azerbaijani forces first pushed into the area, including toward the village of Nerkin Hand, in 2021. Sections of the reserve along the border have since been turned into Azerbaijani positions and connecting roads.

One resident said the troops were cutting roads, building dugouts, and using felled timber both for construction and as firewood.

Ayser Ghazaryan, a forester who monitors the area via satellite imagery, said Azerbaijan has destroyed about 60 hectares of forest — thick oaks and hornbeams totaling some 17,000 cubic meters — and that the logging has not stopped. He estimated that roughly 3,200 hectares now lie in the direct line of fire, with a smaller stretch under observation and within range of mortars of up to 60 millimeters. He called it ecocide against Armenia's natural heritage, not only a question of territory.

Ghazaryan also said an interactive trilingual map on the Territorial Administration Ministry's website, prepared with international partners, had left out roughly 360 to 380 hectares of the Shikahogh section. The map has since been taken offline, and the ministry said it was making a technical correction.

Asked months ago about logging in Shikahogh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he had received no such information, adding that Armenia could not fail to respond if trees were being cut on its sovereign territory.

There has been no official condemnation of Azerbaijan, but the cutting has been confirmed by both military and government officials. Where a fortification is built, the trees in the way are felled, Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Edvard Asryan said. Environment Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan declined to call the damage a disaster, describing it instead as harm to the ecosystem. He said the full extent could not be measured until after border delimitation, and stressed that the government's priority was the peace agenda.

Ghazaryan argued that raising the issue would not derail peace talks, since both countries have ratified the relevant conventions. He pointed to the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), which Armenia will host this fall, as a venue to press for the troops' withdrawal.

Villagers say Red Book species are also at risk, with bezoar goats and bears hunted for food by Azerbaijani soldiers.