In August, environmental activists from the Teghout Defense Group, observed and registered the felling of trees in the Gougark forested district, located in Lori Marz. They notified the Ministry of Nature Protection about their findings. The Ministry sent out an investigative team to the area in question and verified that trees had indeed been illegally chopped down. But they only cited 11 cases and set a measly fine of 200,000 AMD. Yesterday, employees of the State Forest Monitoring Center, accompanied by reporters and Teghout activists, visited the site. In the space of two hours, the group registered 116 felled trees. The area affected is quite large. "You can see clearly with the naked eye that many more than 11 trees have been felled. The area is enormous. The monitoring group confessed that it wasn’t possible to examine the entire area in just one day," says Mariam Soukhudyan, a member of the Teghout Defense Group.