The 5-minute piece tells the story of Karine Panosyan, a young Armenian woman in love with nature, whose dedication is helping to save the Armenian forests from illegal cutting.

The FLEG II Forest Heroes series is dedicated to people who take care of the forest and save it for future generations. All Forest Heroes have something else in common: they have all worked in partnership with FLEG II. The Program, funded by the European Union, is completing its work this year. The Forest Heroes series is one of the ways to talk about the work done over the 5 years since the launch of FLEG II.

Karine couldn’t sit and watch forests being destroyed any longer. This is the reason why she decided to join the volunteers of the Public Monitoring of Forests team. With the guidance of FLEG II experts, they learned how to spot illegally cut trees and how to collect the data to record and prove the crimes.

“Well-trained human resources and up-to-date satellite tools are indispensable factors in detecting illegal activities. We formed several groups of citizens who, together with our experts, conduct field research as professionally as possible. Thanks to their meticulous work over the course of 2015, 1,425 illegally cut trees were identified across a land area of approximately 190 hectares, 8 forestry enterprises were inspected by Armenian authorities, and 3 criminal cases were filed. All this would have been unthinkable prior to this activity” Luba Balyan, FLEG II Country Program Coordinator for IUCN Armenia.

The video was produced by Panda Agency.