SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region - The wave of cold weather that swept through the Kurdistan Region over the past months, with temperatures falling below zero degrees Celsius, has caused a large number of trees to dry out in Sulaimani province. The majority of trees damaged by the cold weather are fruit producing ones, taking a financial toll on orchard farmers who are concerned it may take years for them to recover and start making fruit again. Dedicating most of his life to gardening and farming, Taha Haji Rahim, 55, who now acts as the head of the Sulaimani Branch of the Kurdistan Farmers Syndicate says he had never, in his lifetime, seen trees dry up due to extreme cold. Rahim has an orchard outside Sulaimani city where 200 of his walnut trees and 500 liana vines have been damaged by the inclement weather. "Many of the fruit trees in the Kurdistan Region dried up including walnut, fig, pomegranate, and olive. Millions of fruit trees probably dried out in the Kurdistan Region, unfortunately,” Rahim told Rudaw’s Nizar Jaza on Saturday. Most of the dried-out trees in Sulaimani city are of the eucalyptus type. Relevant local authorities have started to take a close look at them to prevent them from being cut down. ‘We monitor them until the month of June, so we can take closer care of them, so we prevent them from being cut down. Because we are aware that people who see the trees are dried out want to cut them," Hawzhin Othman, spokesperson of the Sulaimani Gardens Directorate, said. A total of 113,000 dunams of land in Sulaimani and 12,00 dunams in Halabja have been designated to be gardens, according to the Sulaimani Gardening Directorate.
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