(CN) — Some of Europe’s last tracts of old-growth forest, left untouched for centuries due to their remoteness in the steep Carpathian Mountains of Romania, are being cut down, often by lucrative illegal logging operations, scientists and advocacy groups warn.
Researchers, journalists and advocates also report being the victims of intimidation, harassment and violence while seeking to document the logging.
Meanwhile, Romanian authorities are accused of corruption and logging operations of hiring criminal squads to protect their businesses. Romania, like other Eastern European countries, is wracked by widespread corruption.
The European Union is under pressure to do more to stop the clear-cutting and enforce EU rules that prohibit the degradation of old-growth forests. Romanian forestry authorities are accused of blocking conservation efforts and ignoring EU conservation laws.
“When it comes to forest, we are currently witnessing the most serious tragedy in Romania,” said Gabriel Schwaderer, head of the EuroNatur Foundation, a German environmental group, in a telephone interview.
In November, Romanians protested outside the European Commission offices in Brussels and demanded action.
“This is a wake-up call about the tragic environmental crisis that is destroying Romania’s virgin forests,” said Gabriel Paun, who runs Agent Green, a Romanian environmental group, in a statement at the time. Paun was beaten up in 2015 while investigating logging operations. “Their loss from logging is one of the biggest nature emergencies in the EU today,” he said.
Agent Green estimates that 38 million cubic meters of wood is logged every year: 20 million more than is officially permitted.
The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, is not standing by entirely. In 2015, the EU threatened Romania with legal action unless it cracks down on illegal logging and takes steps to better track where timber is harvested.
In an email, an EU official said the commission is monitoring Romania’s efforts to come into line with EU demands.
Environmentalists say much more needs to be done.
In a recent report, researchers with the Czech University of Life Sciences documented a sudden increase in heavy logging in the remote Fagaras Mountains, where centuries-old beech trees abound. These mountains are part of the Carpathian chain.
“New roads appeared, and large clear-cuts arose. More than one-meter-diameter trees, which were growing here for centuries, were logged for timber and firewood,” the report states.
The report includes photographs showing large tracts of forest reduced to stumps and logging roads plowed through the old forests.
“We thought nobody will ever cut these forests,” said Martin Mikoláš, one of the researchers. He has spent weeks in the remote Fagaras forests on research trips. “We are really losing the last primary forests in Europe in a very rapid way. These are the last wild places in Europe.”
He worries loggers will not be stopped in such remote mountains, though Romania has laws that could be applied to halt the timber harvests.
He also charged that Romanian forestry officials are underestimating the age of trees and wrongly classifying forests as not virgin woods, which means they are not covered by strict conservation rules.
Fern, a European environmental group, alleged in a recent report that clear-cutting was permitted by the government through the use of forged documents and corruption.
In the Fagaras, the old beech trees cut down contain lots of rotten wood, which makes them unsuitable to be used as building materials. This makes Mikoláš believe they end up as firewood and pulp for making paper.
“It's really frustrating and depressing to see that the European Union can't protect the last fragments of their own primary forests,” he said.
In fact, Romania's entry into the EU in 2007 likely helped accelerate the cutting of these old forests. In a cruel twist, he said EU-sponsored billboards are found on some logging roads announcing that EU funds paid for the road construction.
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