Forest Rational Use, Conservation of Chestnut and Oak Endangered Trees, Training of Local People and their Education for this Purposes

5 Apr 2012 Kharagauli, Georgia, Asia Plants

Giorgi Kirkitadze

Chestnut and Oak forest is decreasing rapidly in Georgia. Our aim is ecological education of local people and conservation of chestnut and oak unique forest.

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Kharagauli district is located on auto and railway main line, however the economic and social situation is heavy. Here is no any industry because of its mountainous relief. Same time here is no enough land for agricultural business too, so main income for local inhabitants is forest. Mainly people cut trees with high commercial value such as Chestnut, Oak and Beech. Valued trees are replaced with non valued trees such as hornbeam, asp and etc, same time in forest there are left old-hollow and sick trees, which can’t establish a good community of trees and to recover previous condition needs more than 100 years. During cutting people does not remove also waste, which can be used as a wood for heating and same time it serves as a source for forest pests and diseases. There are many places where the key problem for forest is pests. Random cutting causes erosion, especially when Kharagauli forests are on steep slopes. All above counted problems are very important and the role of local population to solve these problems is quite high.

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We plan field expeditions and seminars with school children from 10 high schools in Kharagauli district. The key outcomes are:

- To determine wood-plant species distributed around villages of Kharagauli district, the portion of each species in plant community in chosen model plots;

- To give knowledge about importance of chestnut and oak forest protection;

- To complete list of local forest pests; To evaluate the present condition of forest; To determine the dominant species of trees;

- To determine dominant pest species; Based on log of trees and waste after cut, to determine a past condition of forest;

- To give recommendations about future activities;

- To educate local pupil and inhabitants in rational use of forest resources, which makes their life safer. We will train pupils to measure some morphological parameters of leaves to compare this data with other oak tree data. We plan to publish and distribute illustrated booklets for local people about the forest conservation importance for regional and global biodiversity, its rational use and care.

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