Diary
AMMAN (Petra) - The Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) has recently signed an agreement with the Euro-Mediterranean Association for Cooperation and Development (EMA) to strengthen cooperation in the fields of trade and investment between Jordan and Germany. Signed by ACC Chairman Riad Saifi and EMA’s President Horst Siedentopf on the sidelines of the Hamburg Logistics Forum, the agreement seeks to enhance business cooperation through exchanging ex....
The General Assembly held the Annual General meeting for the Arab Orphan Committee by the president of the Executive Committee Tayseer Kna'an. The partcipants discussed the activities of the Assembly in Jordan and Palestine and the most important development projects
The Committee of Training Courses and Continuing Education at Bar Association held a seminar about the environmental legislation between the legal concepts and practical application, it was attended by a large number of lawyers and those who are interested in the environmental field.
Newsletter
Articles and Openions
Helping women
Jordantimes
Empowering women, ending poverty
Michelle Bachelet
When women lead
Joseph S. Nye
Nobody knows what lies ahead
Jean-Claude Elias
Green activism to protect forests
Odeh Al Jayyousi
Civil Society Organisation
Reports & Studies
Volunteer campaign to clean up litter, plant trees in Dibbeen reserve
AMMAN - Hana Namrouqa - Hundreds of Aleppo pine trees will be planted in the Dibbeen Forest Reserve after wild fires over the past three years destroyed much of the plant’s population, ecologists said on Thursday.
The trees will be planted on Saturday as part of a volunteer clean-up campaign organised by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), according to organisers.
"The clean-up campaign, organised by the RSCN for the third consecutive year, aims at discouraging people from littering and preserving the Kingdom’s limited green cover," Wild Jordan acting Director Nasr Tamimi said yesterday.
Families, schoolchildren and people from all walks of life are invited to converge on the reserve on Saturday to clean up litter left by picnickers and to plant Aleppo pine saplings, according to the RSCN.
Buses for those wishing to take part in the event will depart from the RSCN headquarters in Jubeiha at 9:00am; the event starts at 10:00am and ends at noon.
Around 100 dunums covered with over 5,670 trees, mainly Aleppo pines, were damaged in 2008 in a wildfire that erupted in Al Jabal Al Aqra area in the Dibbeen Forest Reserve, a sanctuary for globally endangered species.
Despite numerous campaigns against littering in public places and forests, the public continues to ignore laws outlawing the practice, according to environmentalists.
Many motorists still throw trash out of their car windows, while picnickers enjoy the country's limited green forests and then leave the sites littered with garbage and plastic bags, damaging the fragile environment and jeopardising the lives of animals.
The clean-up campaign at the Dibbeen reserve is part of the 2010 Clean Up the World Campaign, which started in 1989 when Australian yachtsman and builder Ian Kiernan, appalled by the amount of rubbish he came across while sailing, organised a clean-up of Sydney Harbour.
The campaign, headquartered in Sydney, went global in 1993, gathering hundreds of members from around the globe, who carry out environmental projects throughout the year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s website.
The Dibbeen Forest Reserve, situated in the northern Governorate of Jerash, was established in 2004 with the aim of protecting Aleppo pine trees, particularly as Dibbeen is the driest part of the world in which Aleppo pines grow naturally, with an average rainfall of around 400 millimetres per year, according to the RSCN.
The Dibbeen Forest is home to at least 17 threatened species, including the Persian squirrel, in addition to over a quarter of all butterfly species that exist in the Kingdom. It extends over 8.5 square kilometres of mountainous terrain, rich with pine and oak trees.