A senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Range and Forestry Department said that the department would submit a proposal to raise fines for logging by more than 100 percent to stop the practice.

The current fine is SR2,000 per ton and the confiscation of the logged property, in addition to SR1,000 per tree.

The fines are doubled if the offense is committed a second time.

Fahd Al-Harbi, the department’s director, said that his ministry would issue licenses for selling logs and coal in order to control import and gather information and statistics to help investors open shops to sell such material.

Al-Harbi said that the ministry is in the process of implementing a giant project to plant trees near cities and in locations where sewage water is available.

“This project will be started in cities such as Makkah, Qassim, Asir and Al-Ahsa to take advantage of the already existing trees growing in these areas and establish wild parks. The opportunity will be open for investors to invest in the logging industry,” said Al-Harbi.

He said that the Ministry of Agriculture increased its efforts to monitor and guard forests and wild areas by signing an agreement with a private security agency specialized in the field. “More than 200 forest rangers will be deployed in forests across the Kingdom to do the job,” he said.

He said their efforts would focus on locations where logging occurs the most, such as Makkah, Madinah, Asir, Baha and Jazan. The rangers, he said, would be provided with vehicles equipped with monitoring and patrolling gear.

Al-Harbi said, however, that 200 rangers are insufficient to guard wooded areas.

“These are the capabilities that are currently available. The ministry will work on increasing their number in the future,” he said.

He said the ministry encourages the import of logs and coal from aboard by canceling tariffs and extending loans to investors in the field from the Agricultural Development Fund.