Photo: National Police Chief Colonel Valery Osipyan, left, and National Security Service Director Colonel Arthur Vanetsyan, right, at a Cabinet meeting

YEREVAN, MAY 10, ARMENPRESS. The May 10 Cabinet meeting featured some noteworthy debates regarding wildlife preservation, as the Government of Armenia approved to bring forward a proposal on enforcing a 100,000,000 dram fine for poaching of the endangered Caucasian leopard.

Moreover, National Security Service Director Arthur Vanetsyan, who was in attendance, suggested to enforce a 3-5 year total nationwide hunting ban.

“Let’s ban hunting for 3 to 5 years in Armenia in order for the wildlife population to be restored. I myself was a very active hunter in the past, but I haven’t hunted for already 6-7 years and I am speaking about this all the time. Let’s introduce this initiative, let’s ban hunting generally, and for the ban to be not only through these laws that we are adopting, but also, for example, by a temporary ban on hunting cartridges. Because they are doing irregular hunting,” Vanetsyan said.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan tasked to deal with the matter, but to study the issue comprehensively.

“We must do something like that because this idea is a very good and appropriate one. But we must look at this problem comprehensively. I suppose there are animals whose population is of no problem. Let us carry out an expert study”, he said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan