ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Around 250 volunteers and hiking enthusiasts gathered on Mount Safeen in the Kurdistan Region's Shaqlawa district in Erbil province on Sunday for an environmental initiative organized by the Rwanga Foundation, planting oak seeds and installing trail markers to promote environmental protection and safer hiking.
Participants brought with oak seeds along a two-kilometer hiking route toward Jootadar camp on Mount Safeen, planting them along the way before installing signs to help hikers navigate the mountain.
“This is a very important mountain infrastructure topic,” Hemin Amin, Secretary of the Kurdistan Hiking Federation, told Dilnya Rahman on Sunday, explaining that the project aims to improve hiking routes across the Kurdistan Region.
“We plan to mark and place signs along a large portion of Kurdistan's hiking trails, and later digitally record them in a hiking app,” he added.
The initiative is part of a broader effort by the Rwanga Foundation to improve environmental sustainability in the Kurdistan Region, including its "Zagros Campaign" initiative, which aims to plant one million Oak seeds.
The Foundation has also installed solar powered electricity at Jootadar camp and begun work on a water supply project.
Hassan Sheikh Alaaldin, the foundation’s executive director, said the improvements followed commitments by Rwanga Foundation president Idris Nechirvan Barzani during a visit to the camp last year.
“At that time, he made a series of promises, one of which was the provision of electricity through solar energy, which, as you can see today, has been supplied to this camp,” Alaaldin said. He added that work to bring water to the camp "has already begun and which we are currently working to complete."
Local hiker groups welcomed the improvements, saying they would make the camp more accessible to visitors.
"It has enabled the Shaqlawa Mountaineering Group and Jootadar Camp to progress forward,” Haji Rizgar, Head of the Shaqlawa Hiking Group, said, referring to the project.
The Mount Safeen projects are part of the foundation's wider environmental and renewable energy effort.
In September, the Rwanga Foundation inaugurated a solar energy project in Hawdiyan Village in Soran district, providing electricity to 38 homes, a church, a mosque, a school and a health center.
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
