Sarkis: Creating Databases for the Management of Wildlife in Syria

DAMASCUS, (ST) -The Minister of State for Environmental Affairs, Dr. Naira Sarkis, has underlined that the ministry is working in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture to create databases for the management of wildlife and natural reserves and pastorals in a sustainable way to alleviate the effects of vandalism and destruction caused to biodiversity.

During the opening of a workshop on “the protection and sustainable management of natural reserves”, the minister indicated to the importance of the database to protect the development of wildlife and nature reserves, conservation of the dangers of pollution and depletion of natural resources, raising the efficiency of use and the study of social and economic impacts on them.

“Creating a database is an important way to help researchers and decision-makers and management of nature reserves in the use of methods and techniques in a systematic and modern work,” the minister pointed out.

For his part, the Director of Biodiversity and Land Reserves in the ministry, eng. Bilal al-Hayek,  said the workshop comes within the project  of management and protection of wildlife and nature reserves in the Middle East and regions of the Near East, which is implemented by the Syrian government with the United Nations Food and Agriculture, (FAO)  pointing out that this workshop is the first the project’s workshops  that is being implemented in coordination with the General Authority for Remote Sensing.

The workshop included many themes that focused on the overall design of databases concerning protected areas and wildlife and the definition of interfaces input, update, and computer programming and networking to manage their own databases in addition to practical applications in the use of input interfaces to databases in protected areas and wildlife.

Trainees from the Ministry of State for Environmental and the Ministry of Agriculture took part in the two-day workshop.

Sharif  el -Khatib