Setting off the deforestation alarm, agriculture and environment officials pointed to the Jerash, Dibbeen and Ajloun areas as hot spots.

Sources familiar with the issue differ on whom to blame on the arbitrary deforestation.

Local reports and citizens have said the increase in fuel prices prompted low-income people, especially in rural areas, to cut the trees and use them as a source of energy.

“The cost of a 20-litre fuel container has increased to JD10 and the weather is getting colder and colder, people need anything they can find to warm their homes,” Mohammad Odeh, a sales assistant at a shop selling wood for fire, told The Jordan Times on Monday.

He added that demand on “jift”, or olive leftovers after press, has increased. This renewable energy alternative is cheaper, he added.

“Jift was a burden that olive presses did not know how to get rid of, but now, a tonne is being sold for over JD200,” Odeh said.

Jift manufacturing has developed into an industry. There are now factories producing jift in small dry blocks to be burned in wood stoves or fireplaces.

But many still prefer wood for heating, a trend that has created an underground business which authorities are trying to curb.

Minister of Agriculture Muzahim Muhaisin said Ajloun and Jerash residents, who are raised in a culture that appreciates trees, could not be the ones to take blame for the illegal logging.

“It is those dealers who sneak into forests at night to cut trees, then sell them to rich people,” Muhaisin said.

“These rich people burn the timber of a 200-year-old tree in their fireplaces,” Muhaisin told The Jordan Times recently.

Tree cutters are using silent saws to avoid being caught by our rangers, who wander around forest areas to protect trees from such violations, the minister added.

“The trees require over 100 years to grow and are now being cut within 10 minutes. The ministry’s rangers caught several people red-handed over the past week in the middle of the night and referred them to courts,” said the minister.

Meanwhile, Environment Police Department (EPD) Director Colonel Mahmoud Turk said the department launched late last year an intensified campaign to curb violations targeting the country’s forests.

The EPD recorded 48 cases of illegal logging last year, but since the beginning of the year, over 18 infringements, involving the confiscation of 93 tonnes of wood, were registered, said Turk.

Last week, the department’s rangers caught a water tank on its way from Ajloun to Amman carrying inside it over 30 trees, said the colonel.

Shops selling wood should be closely monitored to inspect the sources of their merchandise, Turk said, adding that if the law was properly enforced, the number of violations would definitely go down.

According to the Environment Ministry’s booklet listing environmental violations, those who cut forest trees are to be fined JD100 per tree and face a three-month jail term.

Agriculture and environment experts warn that unless legal measures are taken, the green cover is expected to disappear in the coming few years.

Meanwhile, Zuhdi Kanaan, owner of a shop that sells wood on the Medical City Road, said he always tries to make sure to obtain his wood from legal sources.

“I purchase the wood from farmers of olive and fruit trees, who prune or cut their own trees,” Kanaan told The Jordan Times yesterday.

Prices of wood have notably increased compared to last winter by 200 per cent. A tonne of wood is now sold for JD250-JD300 depending on its type, as compared to JD75-JD90 a tonne last winter.

“Demand for wood is increasing and I believe it is related to the hike in fuel prices,” said Kanaan.

Seeking to limit violations, the Ministry of Environment said the next stage will witness systematic and intensified campaigns to preserve the country’s forests.

Ministry of Environment Spokesperson Isa Shboul told The Jordan Times that the campaigns include increasing the number of rangers in forest areas, setting up monitoring stations for the EPD in Dibbeen and deploying patrols along the roads leading to and leaving from forest areas.