Environmental activist Mariam Sukhudyan claims that the owners of the Valleta Hotel in Tzaghkadzor have been illegally chopping down trees on the slope of the mountain in order to expand their usable lands. She also argues that the owners are in cahoots with local law enforcement officials who have turned a blind eye to the deforestation. Ms. Sukhudyan says that yesterday, the last day of a meeting of Armenian environmentalist leaders, she decided to take a walk in the vicinity of the hotel and heard chainsaws. She says she began to video tape the destruction and was soon confronted by a group of men who basically told her to "get lost". She returned to the hotel to inform her colleagues of what was taking place. About twenty activists, armed with their video cameras, returned to the site, but the destruction had been completed. Police had arrived on the scene and were supposedly taking notes. Ms. Sukhudyan states that no one called the police and wonders how they found out about the confrontation between the hotel owners and the activists.